Cheap Flights to India: The impact of DGCA Instructions to Airlines

Flights to India

After the DGCA instructions to the airlines to publish the airfares on their website well in advance there is a growing debate on the impact of the step on Air ticket pricing and the next move by airlines. The common thinking among the travel agents and ticketing portals is that the disclosures of fares on airline websites will be of little use to passengers unless they plan their air travel well in advance.

Now that the domestic airline websites will have to publish route-wise tariff information on their networks for various fare brackets, they are expected to give a range of fare slabs for each route on their websites at the beginning of each month, for tickets booked 21 days, 14 days and 7 days in advance of their date of travel. While this disclosure is expected to improve transparency for passengers, it may lead to general rise in Airfares for even the passengers who book well in advance as the last minute flight deals  would be on a downswing.

But this do not mean that passengers cannot expect Cheap air ticket deals, if they book well in advance. Passengers who book in advance are the ones who are likely to get the cheapest and the best deals as presently at least 50 percent of the people book flight tickets one week in advance which allows the airlines to plan their last minute offering in optimal manner.

Another point of interest is whether the airlines, even if they provide the route tariff information, would publish user friendly data. For example for the tariffs published on route basis, most airlines have omitted some or the other detail.  For instance, the fine print below the page states that these published fares  do not include passenger service fee, user development fee, transaction fee and service tax. Similarly most airlines do not bother to explain to its customers the airline jargon used on the tariff pages. But it may be noted that most of the international flights carriers follow what the DGCA has instructed to the Indian Airlines.The impact on Airlines Booking is still to be analyzed.