Speaking at the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Institue of Chartered Accountants of India , Vinod Dhall, acting chairman, CCI, said, "The aviation industry can disscuss the increased prices of ATF but can never decide on their own what should be the minimum fare that they should charge. Competition law was envisaged keeping in mind such situations only, where a price cap put by a particular industry acts against the interests of consumers".
Reacting to Dhall's comment, airlines said the Competition Commission should first look at bigger cartels like oil companies, which are responsible for the huge fare increase over the last few months.
The aviation industry has been looking at various measures to cut losses that carriers have been incurring due to increased fuel prices in the past few months.
"In a meeting between the competition commission a few months ago, where the civil aviation ministry was also present, we had said that an increase in prices by the airlines is a direct consequence of ATF price increases by a cartel of oil companies and asked the Commissiontolook into this bigger cartel," said Siddhanta Sharma, chairman, SpiceJet.
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Other airline executives agreed with this view and said that at a recent aviation industry meeting, the moot point of discussion was the impact of rising ATF prices.
The Federation of Indian Airlines, a lobbying body of Indian carriers, had a meeting on July 1 to discuss issues like high ATF prices and airport charges among other things.
Sources said that during the meeting, it was decided that low cost carriers would not increase air ticket fares for this month.
"We did not decide any pricing in the meeting. Pricing decisions for IndiGo are made by IndiGO and not by any committee" said Bruce Ashby, CEO, IndiGO.