The Centre held a meeting with online journey aggregators to talk over consumer complaints and also floated the idea of appointing an ombudsman.
With domestic air travellers exceeding pre-coronavirus levels month after month and recording new highs, a spate of fault-finding from passengers has forced the government to discuss setting up an ombudsman or an authority to address hard feelings.
The Department of Consumer Affairs on Wednesday held a meeting with online journey aggregators, officials of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation after it received nearly 10,000 fault-finding made through the National Consumer’s Helpline over the past 7- 8 months over issues such as delays in refunds from airlines, denied boarding and unavailability of free seats at the time of reserving a ticket and website check-in.
“The establishment of an Ombudsman for time-bound resolution of consumer hard feelings was also meditated. The Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Department of Consumer Affairs can together work on the modalities involved in establishing the same, ” said a press statement issued by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs.
Officials also talked over ways to integrate the National Consumer Helpline of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and the AirSewa portal of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and ways to generate and build further mindfulness about the Passenger Charter which details the rights of passengers during flight cancellations, diversion, denial of boarding or if a baggage is lost or mishandled.
An aged official of the Ministry of Civil Aviation said, “ We were open to the idea of an Ombudsman. ” He added that the fault-finding was received through the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System, an online website administered by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, and the AirSewa website was being taken up by the Ministry for resolution with the airlines concerned.
Former officials of the Ministry also say that an Ombudsman for the aviation sector is among the major reforms required to improve air journeys and that such a proposal was mooted as early as in the year 2013. India is the 3rd biggest domestic aviation market in the world, after the United States and China. There were 4.07 lakh domestic air travellers per day on average in October and 1.25 crore passengers in the calendar year of 2022.
There are regulators for aviation safety( Directorate General of Civil Aviation), aviation security( Bureau of Civil Aviation Security), airport tariff( Airport Economic Regulatory Authority) and an Aircraft Accidents Investigation Bureau, but no authority for grievances from air tourists.