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Sambhar Mafia - Cooked To Kill!

Monday, November 20, 2006

Fair Deal on Airfares

NRIs and foreigners booking tickets on Indian domestic carriers will now pay fares on par with domestic passengers. In the earlier set-up, when an overseas resident tries to book tickets online or through a travel agent, there would be a USD fare applicable to such purchases. Foreign residents were not given the benefit of the advance purchase discounts offered by most domestic airlines. As a workaround, most of the people tried to use their Indian contacts to buy tickets locally (in India) for domestic flights in order to take advantage of the cheaper fares. The airlines have decided to do away with the dual pricing setup and will go in for a uniform pricing regime.

The three legacy carriers — Jet Airways, Indian Airlines and Air Sahara — have a policy of charging dollar fares on tickets sold abroad to foreigners. These dollar fares are generally priced around 50% above the normal rupee fare. This practice is now being discontinued, and the dollar fares would now be charged on exact conversion rates against the rupee and not at a premium, sources told ToI.

3 Comments:

  • Nice move.

    Next, the same should apply in places where the foreigners visit like 5-star hotels and tourist spots like the Taj Mahal. I remember seeing a board there saying the entrance fee as $5 or some such for foreigners.

    A somewhat related titbit - I remember one my uncle's friends saying he paid the premium for Bajaj Chetak as dollars. Don't know why/how this system worked then in the 80s. The Govt must have been so starved of forex then that they resorted to such measures. Compare that to now, where we have such a surplus that we don't know where/how to spend it.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:37 PM  

  • A much needed and welcome decision.

    The next aim should be to remove the disparity in pricing to the tourist attractions and I donno what nots.

    You cannot have a slogan of "atithi devo bhava" and have such rampant discrimination.

    By Blogger Cogito, at 4:22 PM  

  • makes sense

    By Blogger unfuel the planet, at 10:31 AM  

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