36740, yes Thirty Six thousand bucks for a Delhi-Jammu flight during Haryana agitation. Am I travelling to United States? No but only 600 kilometres. Then why the hell should I pay this much?
The same price range was seen for Delhi-Chandigarh route and the Jet Airways was on a looting spree and the same was breaking news and the trending hashtag on social networking sites. Have these airlines taken people for granted or they are doing this as they are being backed and supported by someone.
In fact there is a regulatory body in India. The directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) is the regulatory body for civil aviation and it comes directly under the ministry of civil aviation. Currently it investigates aviation accidents and incidents. But being a regulator does it do anything in the case of travel pricing. No!. In fact the airlines are deregulated over pricing but that does not mean they will take unnecessary advantage of the customer and loot him whenever they can.
In United States they have Airline Deregulation Act since 1987 which is a federal law and is intended to remove government control over fares and it necessarily means that Players in the business cannot loot the customer. Contrary to it, the same is happening in India. Uncontrolled pricing ranging from 3000 to 30000 is the consequence of the same. The civil aviation scenery in India has grown widely in India. Whereas prior to 1992, when the two public sector airlines, namely Air-India and Indian Airlines enjoyed a monopoly in the domestic sector, today around 20 airlines are competing for a market share in the rapidly growing domestic and International market. We have more than 20 airlines and they always take commuters for granted due to the absence of strict price regulator. Whereas price should be dependent on demand and supply of the product but it is not what is seen here. Unnecessarily hiking prices is always what we are seeing. The hikes sometimes are 3000% more. Take an example of banks, since deregulation we have seen positive growth of banking industry. Deregulation here does not mean a bank will set an interest rate of 80%, technically it can, but practically it never will. Airlines have and are charging 30000 for a 3000 rupee trip and it does not seem to end. Strict regulation needs to be implemented on airlines so that they do not exploit and commuters for granted.
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