According to flyers' body, such schemes are merely gimmick and passengers are taken for a ride.
Hotting up the low-fares war among airlines, SpiceJet on Wednesday rolled out a new scheme offering base costs as low as Rs 444 on some destinations on its domestic network with a select booking period and limited number of seats.
No sooner did the no-frills carrier announce its 'Monsoon Bonanza Sale', flyers' body Air Passengers Association of India (APAI) wrote to aviation regulator DGCA, seeking to know if it was mulling any action on such "bogus" schemes by airlines. The five-day sale launched on Wednesday will be open till the midnight of June 26, the airline said, adding the travel period under the offer stands between July 1 and September 30.
The SpiceJet promo one-way base fare of Rs 444 are for select sectors, including Jammu-Srinagar, Ahmedabad-Mumbai, Mumbai-Goa, Delhi-Dehradun and Delhi-Amritsar routes. Fares would vary according to sector, depending on the travel distance and flight schedules, and timings are subject to regulatory approvals and change(s), it said. Besides SpiceJet, IndiGo, GoAir and Air Asia India had recently come out with similar low-fare offers.
Alleging that the airlines were "taking for a ride" the passengers with such schemes, APAI wrote to Directorate General of Civil Aviation to raise concern over the issue. "This has reference to the advertisement released by SpiceJet in today's news papers ... We started getting complaints from as early as 10.20 AM from many of our members stating that no such fare is available even for short distance of less than 500 km," APAI founder and national president D Sudhakara Reddy said in the strongly-worded letter.
According to APAI, its members found that most of these fares offered in the flash sale are for flights originating from Delhi and for nearby destinations such as Amritsar, Chandigarh, etc. "We then asked our office to try for other destinations. (Here also) even in the first half of the day when the advertisement has appeared, no such fares are available. So what is the logic for such offers?," APAI said.
"We strongly believe that these are nothing but gimmicks and the gullible passengers are being taken for a ride (in the name of such low fare schemes," he said. Reddy, in his letter, also sought to know the "action" the DGCA intended to take over such offers by the airlines.
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