Dayanidhi Maran flags airfare spikes; Om Birla concurs, suggests probe

In a startling claim that prompted even Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to nudge the Centre for a “thorough inquiry”, former Union minister and DMK MP from Chennai Central, Dayanidhi Maran, claimed on Thursday (July 25) that commercial airline operators, particularly the Tata Group-owned Vistara, were abruptly and steeply increasing airfares as part of a “conspiracy”.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha during the Question Hour, Maran said he routinely booked flight tickets for Delhi online “through the Vistara Airlines which belongs to Tata, and the software is operated by Tata’s TCS”.

The senior DMK MP claimed, “When I book a one-way ticket from Chennai to Delhi, it is Rs 33,000 but when I go to make the payment, an error message pops up. The moment the error message comes, the price goes to Rs 93,000 or Rs 78,000... this has been happening very frequently on the Delhi-Chennai or Chennai-Delhi route...There is a conspiracy happening. We would like a thorough inquiry. Tata is having a monopoly in this business segment. The money is paid by the Government of India.”

Birla calls for probe

Maran’s intervention came while Union Minister for Civil Aviation Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu was struggling to respond to questions by several MPs over “exorbitant airfares” being charged by various commercial airlines and the spike in instances of flight cancellations/re-scheduling that caused “enormous losses” and “suffering” to passengers.

In a rare instance of the Lok Sabha Speaker promptly coming out in support of an Opposition MP’s demand from the government for an investigation, Birla told the Aviation Minister that he too had received “similar complaints from many members” and that the matter must be investigated thoroughly because the cost for airline tickets that an MP is entitled to is “borne by Parliament”.

“The member has raised a very serious issue and it needs to be thoroughly investigated. Many members have complained about this,” the Speaker told Naidu.

Birla, however, did not specify whether complaints from other MPs regarding the abrupt hike in airfares were regarding Vistara airlines alone or also about Air India, the other Tata-owned carrier that offers the business class facility in aircraft that MPs are entitled to.

Tariff monitoring

Responding to the Speaker and Maran, Naidu said his ministry would “get the matter investigated” and “ensure that these kind of incidents do not happen in the future”. The minister also added that the “DGCA Tariff Monitoring Unit looks after this specific issue that he (Maran) has raised; we are going to investigate that”.

Details of how many MPs had faced similar problems like Maran’s or if the issue was only limited to tickets booked with Vistara Airlines could not be ascertained.

However, at least one other MP from Tamil Nadu, Congress’s Jothimani, who represents the Karur Lok Sabha constituency, told The Federal that she too had experienced abrupt hikes in air fare “mid-way through the process of booking tickets from Chennai to Delhi or Delhi to Chennai”.

Congress MP KC Venugopal, who served as the junior minister for civil aviation between October 2012 and May 2014 in Manmohan Singh’s UPA-II government, told The Federal that while he personally had not experienced the “steep increase in airfare mid-way through the booking process”, he was aware that “several of our colleagues have had this complaint and even common people have been complaining about this”.

The issue flagged by Maran specifically concerns MPs and Parliament, as members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are entitled to travel business class in any airline that offers the service and have the exchequer foot the bill.

Volley of questions

Thursday’s Question Hour in the Lok Sabha, however, also saw the Aviation Minister parry a volley of questions from MPs regarding the arbitrary pricing of air tickets for common passengers at large as well as growing incidents of flight delays and cancellations.

Flagging both issues in the Lower House, Venugopal said flight delays had “has become the order of the day” and that the Kerala government as well as several other MPs had also been writing to the Centre regarding “exorbitant hike in fares of the Gulf sector”.

Venugopal said: “A huge number of people from Kerala are living in Middle East countries. They are badly suffering due to these delays in flights. Sometimes the flights are cancelled without any information, and no refund is done to the customers...I want to know whether the government has taken note of these things and whether they are going to set up a system to monitor these cancellations. What action is the government going to take in this regard. There is one more thing: the fare is very exorbitantly high. There is no justification. I want to know whether the Government of India has developed any mechanism to tackle this issue.”

Arbitrary pricing

Venugopal’s fellow MP from Kerala’s Vadakara constituency, Congress’s Shafi Parambil, too demanded that the Centre take steps to curb arbitrary ticket pricing by airline operators.

“The airline seat prices will be Rs 5,000 or Rs 6,000 but for the same sector during the vacation time or during the season when they (NRIs, particularly from Gulf countries) come to meet their family, they are being charged Rs 50,000 or Rs 60,000 or even Rs 85,000 for Economy Class. How can a four-member family afford this? How can they come back? At the time of their parent’s death, people cannot even come to attend their funeral. It is a sad state of affairs for our NRIs,” Parambil said.

Naidu conceded that flight cancellations or delays and airlines charging exorbitant airfares was a “cause of concern”. Responding to another question by Amra Ram, CPM MP from Rajasthan’s Sikar, on flight cancellations, Naidu informed the Lok Sabha that a total of 164 flight cancellations, a majority of them for flights operating in and out of Kerala, had been recorded between April and June alone this year.

“On May 7, there were a lot of the crew with Air India Express and because it was merging with Air Asia, there were some internal issues that had cropped up and there was a mass strike that happened. It was because of that strike, a lot of cancellations happened...When this issue started, it was the Ministry which got the DGCA involved, facilitated a lot of discussions between the airlines, the crew members and everything but because of the gap which was there for three days when the (Air India Express) crew was not functioning and there were cancellations, there was a software glitch... for everything to get back to normalcy, there was some time,” Naidu said.

'Customer is king'

The minister also informed the House that Air India had recently been penalised for Rs 10 lakh because “it was not following certain guidelines”. Asserting that “customer is always the king”, Naidu added that “if there seems to be any non-compliance by the airlines, then we are definitely going to penalise them and ensure that the passenger is the top priority”.

On the issue of arbitrary ticket pricing by airline operators, though, the Union Minister seemed to plead helplessness and ended up tying himself in knots.

“The airlines use a market-driven approach for deciding the airfares,” Naidu said, trying to suggest that there is little that his ministry can do to regulate airfares. A moment later though, in a comment that almost suggested that arbitrary ticket pricing had gone unchecked during the tenure of his predecessor Jyotiraditya Scindia, Naidu claimed: “After I took charge as the Minister of Civil Aviation, my immediate commitment to the people of this country was to make the airfares affordable...I was not aware of the rules, but I gave a commitment to the people that we are going to make it affordable. I am ensuring that.”

Yet, shortly after, the minister appeared to suggest that present rules do not permit the government to regulate airfares and any attempt to do so could get mired into legal battles. “At present, the rules are totally against doing that. At one point of time, when the DGCA also wanted to do something, the courts got involved. It is a very tricky process. Even while deciding the airfares, there are a lot of parameters that come into play.”

Not so rosy image

While the Centre has, over the past few years, assiduously claimed that the aviation sector in India was booming due to the initiatives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Naidu went on to paint a not so rosy image of the airline industry.

“One situation that the whole country needs to be aware of is that there are 800 odd planes in the country, and because of engine issues, almost 120 planes are grounded right now. They are not able to fly. Due to lack of aircraft that we have in our fleet, there is a lot of additional burden on the existing aircraft,” Naidu said. He added that he was hoping that the “1,200 aircraft order” which various airlines have collectively placed is “delivered on time” to alleviate the current situation.

Naidu, a first-time central minister, tried hard to keep up with the stream of questions on the many problems that plague the aviation sector, including that of endless announcements by the Centre of setting up new airports awaiting fruition. However, Thursday’s Question Hour also showed that the country’s youngest ever cabinet minister needs to quickly familiarise himself with the goings-on in his ministry.

At one point, Naidu’s repeated response of not being in possession of information sought by various members led the Speaker to pointedly tell him, “you have newly become a minister; please study about all the airports in three months time...next time you should give complete answers, perfectly”.

The Federal reached out to Vistara Airlines for a comment on Dayanidhi Maran’s allegation and the observations by the Lok Sabha Speaker but did not receive any response. This story will be updated as and when Vistara offers a response.