DGCA norms to check overbooking by carriers

Shivaz Rai, owner of a travel agency in Delhi, spent Rs 48,000 on low-cost carrier Air Deccan's Superflier scheme offering coupons for 12 flights to any destination.

A few weeks ago Rai was told that the coupons could not be converted into a ticket because the airline had lost his records on the reservation system.

"I was told that the coupon system was not working and that I had to pay for the ticket again from my debit card and they would adjust it later," said an aggrieved Rai.

Some days ago, a UB-group-owned Kingfisher Airlines' flight took off to Jaipur, leaving Ashish Jalan and his four family members stranded at Mumbai airport, even though they were holding boarding passes. "This is a clear case of overbooking. They promised to call us when the plane was ready for departure but did not," said Jalan.

Anjali Kothari from Delhi had booked an Air Deccan flight from Delhi to Bagdogra on April 17. The flight was cancelled but she never got her money back. "They gave me is a credit note saying that I could use it for another flight without paying. Why would I do that? I need my money back," she says.

With the summer rush just beginning, such cases are growing in frequency. Airline companies, especially budget carriers, are overbooking flights beyond stipulated limits, reservation systems are collapsing, and the promised feedback to customers on flights cancelled or delayed on the phone is just not working.

Stung by complaints to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Minister Praful Patel has promised action. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is working out measures, to be finalised in a month, to ensure that carriers don't overbook beyond limits and make it mandatory for them to inform passengers well ahead of time in such cases.

Overbooking is an international practice and is permitted within limits by airlines that are members of the International Air Travel Association (IATA).

Airlines overbook a certain percentage of their seats based on the historical data on particular flights, taking into account cancellations and "no-shows". However, several domestic airlines appear to be violating these norms.

"We are aware that domestic airlines are overbooking against the permitted IATA limit, "said a senior DGCA official.

"We will penalise airlines if need be and compensate customers who have lost money," said Patel.

Travel agents point out that budget carriers are the biggest culprits of overbooking and Air Deccan has faced a deluge of complaints. However, the Air Deccan Managing Director, Capt G R Gopinath, said his airline's ticket reservation system is not designed for overbooking.

The data loss, explained Air Deccan Chief Revenue Officer and Head (Marketing) Samyukth Sridharan, was the result of the migration to a new reservation system.

The new system, Radixx, could not read the missing PNRs left by old system. However, Sridharan says the airline is ready to refund in such cases and also to re-route passengers, either using its own network or that of other airlines.

The new system seems to be responsible for other problems too. Many aggrieved customers said their flights are sometimes cancelled and the system shows it as a missed flight, which means there is no compensation. In other case, people do not get the PNR number for a flight he had booked a month ago.

Larger airlines with stronger networks, like Jet Airways, face less of a problem.

"We refund tickets or accommodate a passenger on another flight in case of one passenger miss a flight owing to overbooking. We can do so because, say on the Delhi-Mumbai route we have another flight within an hour. So a strong network nullifies the overbooking impact," a Jet Airways executive explained.