The Government’s decision to allow airlines to accept bookings from April 14, 2020 without any clarity on the certainity on the end of the lockdown on that day has evoked sharp criticism.
CAPA Advisory, leading aviation consulting firm has asked the government to immediately review this decision else consumers will loose a lot of money like in the case of Kingfisher and Jet Airways.
“The decision to allow opening of advance bookings from April 14, without a decision on lifting of the lockdown and likely structure of the transition period post the lockdown needs to be immediately reviewed as this is unfair to consumers,” Kapil Kaul, CEO & director, CAPA Advisory said.
“As and when lockdown is lifted and the structure of the transition period is known, MOCA should only allow reopening of the bookings on the sectors which will be operated by Indian airlines during transition and not the entire network,” he added.
“Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways closure has already resulted in massive losses to passengers as refunds couldn’t be processed resulting in crores of losses to passegers,” he said.
Mr. Kaul said, “As of now , significant funds of passenger are already locked with Indian carriers as a result of advance bookings prior to the lockdown and decision to allow bookings post April 14 without any decision of the lifting of lockdown will increase the risks which needs to be avoided.”
He said giving credit vouchers for all advance bookings prior to the lockdown was expected and is reasonable but not for bookings post April 14, 2020.
Anticipating resumption of flight operations in India, a large number of people have booked tickets in private airlines to return to their homes and for other reasons. However, the government is considering to extend the lockdown further to contain the spread of Coronavirus. In this case flight operations would not be possible.
Air India is the only airline from India which is not accepting booking before April 30, 2020.
