On Sunday, airfares from Chandigarh -- the capital of Haryana and Punjab -- had touched abnormal levels.
New Delhi:
As air travellers from Haryana helplessly watched commercial airlines overcharge, the government today said it was closely monitoring the situation even though airfares are "globally unregulated".
Dr Mahesh Sharma, the junior minister of aviation, told NDTV, "Globally, airfares are not regulated. We have requested the airlines to increase flights and bring down the fares. We are watching the fares carefully."
Mr Sharma, who's also a member of the Narendra Modi government's high powered committee that has been set up to find a solution to the Jat agitation, reminded the airlines that Prime Minister had earlier expressed his "concern" about "predatory pricing".
On Sunday, airfares from Chandigarh -- the capital of Haryana and Punjab -- had touched abnormal levels.
An economy ticket on the Delhi-Chandigarh route that used to cost Rs 4,000 had shot up by 10 times. There were reports that a business class ticket between Chandigarh and Mumbai had cost nearly Rs 1 lakh -- more than double the normal fare.
Such abnormal increase was the fallout of the Jat agitation - the violent protests in demand for quota -- that virtually cut off road and rail links between Haryana and the rest of India.
On Sunday, the government stepped in and instructed airlines to mount additional capacity to keep air fares under control.
Private airlines and the national carrier, Air India, operated more than half-a-dozen flights from Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai to Chandigarh and Amritsar to help stranded passengers and fares on these flights were kept around Rs 4,000.
Responding to charges of overcharging, a statement from Jet Airways said: "The higher fares that are referred on third party travel portals are the combination of fares over multi-stop flights.
These fares are not available on Jet Airways website. Such fares will be influenced by the availability of seats on these two different flights and hence will be generally higher than the direct flights."
The airline also said it was "working with third party travel portals to not show such roundabout itineraries with last available Premiere cabin seats".