Spicejet offering domestic tickets at Rs 1299 and 30% discount offered by Jet has heated up the airfare war while Vistara has introduced buy one get one ticket free offer on Wednesday
Mumbai : Even as country’s domestic carriers have in recent times engaged themselves in airfare war to woo the passengers, a quick check on latest statistics shared by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) reveals incidents causing distress for fliers are going northwards.
While air tickets in regional and even national sectors are available at as low as Rs 990/- inclusive of all the applicable taxes and full-service airline like Vistara has now started offering free ticket with each ticket booked, over 8000 passengers were ‘affected’ in June this year due to their flights’ cancelled. Over 47,000 domestic passengers had bore the brunt of their scheduled aircrafts being delayed beyond two hours during June, 2015. And no prize for the right answer, national-carrier Air India tops the list of domestic carriers which distressed their fliers by cancelling flights or AI flights being delayed beyond two hours.
As many as 3734 fliers were affected in June when AI cancelled its several flights and Jet Airways and Jet Lite flights’ cancellations affected 2095 passengers during the same period.
Cancellation of Spicejet flights directly hit 1470 passengers while new-entrant Vistara’s flights cancellations affected only 53 fliers even as it has been operating in only few select routes.
“While AI had to cough up Rs 18.76 lakh to passengers as compensation due to cancellation of flights during June, Jet to compensate Rs 3.07 lakh and Air Asia had to pay compensations worth Rs 6.01 lakh to its passengers. Interestingly, Indigo does not have any such record of cancellation causing harassment to passengers,” said a source in DGCA in the national capital.
In the month of June, AI had a passenger load factor (PLF) of 73.5 per cent while Spicejet reported highest PLF with 93.2 per cent keeping arch rival Indigo and Jet Airways much beyond as they clocked 86.6 and 78.1 per cent PLF.
During the period under consideration, Vistara reported only 59.3 per cent PLF while Go Air clocked 83.6 per cent PLF showing improvement vis-à-vis PLF during June, last year.
But then passengers’ uncertainty over reaching their destinations on time continues. In June, 33116 passengers of AI took their flights which were beyond two hours’ delay even as 3380 Jet Airways passengers reached their destinations much beyond two hours of delays.
AI was forced to pay Rs 40.59 lakh as compensation for abnormal delays of its flights while Spicejet had to spent Rs 2.34 lakh towards the same as 2030 passengers of the low-cost airline had to bore the brunt of abnormally delayed flights operated by Spicejet.
Air Asia also has been penalised by Rs 2.17 lakh for delayed flights which caused inconvenience to 1758 passengers in June, 2015, stated the DGCA report summing up the current scenario.
