Uniform ticket cancellation charges may bring relief to air travellers: Check details

New Delhi: There has been a surge in air passenger traffic for quite some time. According to rating agency Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), domestic air passenger traffic showed year-on-year growth of 52 per cent to 111 lakh in December 2021. While more and more people are opting for air travel these days, the number of people canceling flights has also witnessed a surge. Now there is some good news for such people as the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Transport, Tourism and Culture has pitched for having uniform charges for cancellation of air tickets across airlines. Expressing concerns, the Parliamentary panel questioned the rationale of different cancellation charges by different service providers when they are operating on the same route and covering the same distance. Need for rationalising Stressing on the need for rationalising the cancellation charges, the panel said that there should be an upper limit of cancellation charges that can be collected from the air travellers. At the moment, these charges are not regulated by the government and different airlines levy different charges, which has resulted in no uniformity. "The committee feels that it defies logic that flights of different airlines on a particular sector having the same starting and destination points, and where the duration of the flight is also the same, should have different cancellation charges. The Committee, therefore, strongly recommends that there should be uniform cancellation charges across all airlines," the report said. Once implemented, this will be a huge relief for air travellers. The panel also said that the current system "defies all logic" as there are different cancellation charges for the same starting and destination points. In a separate report, the panel also expressed their concerns about so many posts lying vacant at the Airports Authority of India (AAI). The panel said the huge number of vacancies is bound to have a serious impact on the work efficiency of ATCOs (Air Traffic Controllers).