People love to travel by air especially when you live quite far so as to save time. Majority of the people prefer air on trains, which makes them travel comfortably and reach the destination in minimum possible time. But these sentiments are misused by the airlines and thus result in higher fares. This is generally observed during festivals, vacations and natural disasters, when the price reaches the sky by 3-4 times than that of the regular ones. Severe criticism is faced by the airlines when the fares had almost touched Rs 50,000 for a one way ticket while travelling from Bengaluru to Delhi, which happened in December during the Chennai floods. The high fare prices were also noticed during the Jat agitation that took place recently.
Finally all these high prices are to be capped by the government soon. The government is finally going to announce the mechanism using which high airfares will get curbed. Additionally on the other hand, government is also going to unveil a new civil aviation policy that will help in addressing various types of issues that affects the sector.
Mahesh Sharma, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, said- the civil aviation policy will lay out a roadmap to make India a leading player in the sector which is growing at over 20 per cent currently. The policy will be placed before the cabinet within two weeks.
He further added- government wants to improve the infrastructure in which it shall upgrade the existing airports and at the same time establish some new ones too, for which they need to invest around Rs 15,000 crore in 2016-17.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also very keen to mark the mark the upper cap on the prices of the airline tickets. Keeping this in notice, government does not want to regulate, but want to announce the measures by taking the views of the airlines. Sharma told- “We are in the process of adopting certain measures to cap ticket price. But we are trying to do it by consensus and not by regulation. Our Prime Minister also envisions that fares be kept in control”.
M Sathiyavathy, Directorate General of Civil Aviation Chief, said- “If a capping of airfares is required, then we will have to have discussions with them (airlines)”.
The much awaited civil aviation policy are now sorted out and shall be released soon as it will add in the growth of the aviation sector. This revision in the policy is made to make India the rand the third in the global aviation market. The Minister said – “We wanted to make it a fool proof policy that is why we went through repeated meetings.”
The policy is designed in way that it will address all the pending issues that rise in various sectors for performing better operations.
Verdict: High airfare prices are not bad if kept within a limit. This becomes destructive when these prices hike around 50% which sounds totally unethical. India being a leading marking as now and is continuously working hard to mark its presence globally as the developed one. Policy revisions and time to time up-gradation made by time shall help to build a better structure and position globally.
Author: Mrs. Viveka Verma Nagar