Many years back, you had the culture of low cost airlines coming in, airlines which were like no-fringe airlines. They would fly you from place to place, but in most cases, would be all economy, not offering the luxury of business class. In addition, there would not be free food or liquor (for international travel) and you would be expected to pay for all these services. The advantage was that these were introduced at a lower cost than the airlines in existence at that point of time, and was expected to drastically increase the number of people who would be ready to take a flight rather than depend on train services. And this has happened as well, so in that sense, these low cost services have managed to achieve both benefits for themselves and for the flying public.
However, over the years, there have also been several tactics that have also served to confuse the flying public, and in some cases, be seen as consumer unfriendly. As a basic example, even though airlines used to say that food could be bought on board, even at inflated prices, in a number of cases, the amount of food being carried on board would never seem to be enough. After serving a minority of passengers, the airline would run out of some types of food or drink items, and passengers would have to look for options, or in a few cases, had to make do without food on board even though they were willing to pay. Some of the more serious problems were (and this is a subset):
– Airlines soon started using surcharges on top of a basic fare. The problem initially was that the airline would advertise a base fare, but when the passenger actually wanted to purchase the ticket, the base fare would be combined with a fuel surcharge (the surcharge could be more than the base fare) and could come as a shock. It took some time for the airline regulator to put a stop to these activities, and now the fares offered by airlines includes all the charges so that the customer is aware and not shocked near the end when they find out hidden charges that increase the ticket price.
– Airlines also come out with offers of reduced prices, and although it has got better in the current day, it used to a lot of fraud in the past. There will be a lot of promotion about offers at highly reduced rates, but the fine print mentioned that these were for only a small fraction of the total tickets. Most people would not be aware of the fine print, and would go ahead with trying to purchase a ticket at these offered fares, and then find that these low tickets were sold out within a few minutes, and they were seeing much higher fares.
These were some of the problems that people could see, there were many more, but not so significant.
However, in the past couple of years, a decision by the airline regulator has caused people a lot of confusion. Earlier, it was only meals that had to be purchased, but now all types of seats are being offered for extra money. So, if you want to sit in the front row (earlier used to be reserved for mothers with infants, since that gave them more space), you have to pay extra. Want an aisle seat or a window seat, have to pay extra. Want to sit in the row reserved for emergencies, pay more. But it gets worse. There is no guarantees that people traveling together will get seats together. If they they want to ensure that a family with a husband and wife and kid(s) are traveling and they want to be sure that they get seats together, the only way to be sure is to actually book the ticket and pay the extra charges so that they travel together. This can soon be taken to more lengths. Earlier, the carrying per passenger used to be 20 kg, but this has now been reduced to 15 kg, and it is possible that soon you may be charged extra if you want to carry any check-in luggage, or carry on luggage. Want to carry a baby stroller, sure, just Rs. 300 extra. At some point, if it gets ridiculous, there will be passenger disquiet at these charges, and it also amounts to charges that again inflate the ticket price beyond what is listed (link to article):
Making the long overseas journey in the cramped economy class a little less painful by opting for a seat with extra legroom is going to cost a lot this summer. Several foreign airlines are giving budget flyers the options of pre-booking extra legroom seats for anywhere up to Rs 5,500 on their flights, including to and from India.
Or else, the flyer can take whatever seats are left unbooked a few hours before departure time or while checking-in at the airport. “Some international airlines have recently started levying these steep fees on India flights too,” said Anil Kalsi, a leading Delhi-based travel agent.
