Written by: Ranjani Raghavan
3 min readMumbai/ New DelhiJan 19, 2011 01:49 AM IST
First published on: Jan 19, 2011 at 01:49 AM IST
Domestic flyers can heave a sigh of relief as the government is planning to set up an ombudsman to address their grievances. As of now,there is no dedicated mechanism to deal with passengers complaints.
The idea is to have ombudsman institutions at major cities and towns, said civil aviation secretary Nasim Zaidi.
The decision has stemmed from the second meeting of the newly-formed Civil Aviation Economic Advisory Council CAEAC. Despite the presence of consumer courts,it is difficult for passengers to make their voice heard. Just like any other sector,like banking and insurance,the civil aviation sector too needs an ombudsman, said a senior civil aviation ministry official. The proposal is likely to be fast tracked,the official added,given the surge in number of complaints received by the authorities.
In absence of any nodal authority to deal with passengers complaints,those received by the ministry are forwarded to the air safety regulator. It was a proposal made today. It is the government that will have to appoint the ombudsman, said the Director General of Civil Aviation DGCA Bharat Bhusan who added that it may take a while before it becomes a reality.
This comes at a time when delays and cancellations faced by passengers have been at an all-time high,since the DGCA began implementing its Civil Aviation Requirement since August,asking airlines to compensate passengers for denial of boarding,cancellations and delays.
Having an ombudsman is a good move but the modalities would still have to be worked out, said Sudhakar Reddy,president of the Airline Passenger Association of India,who represented passengers at the meeting. Around 1.54 lakh passengers were delayed by more than two hours,according to DGCA data for December,released on Tuesday. This is more than double the cases of delays in November,when the number was only around 70,000. In October,it was less than 26,000 cases of delay.
As a result,the compensation paid by airlines has also been on a rise. Close to Rs 65 lakh were paid as compensation by airlines to passengers whose flights were cancelled in December. Airlines ended up paying close to Rs 44.98 lakh as compensation for delays in December. In November,airlines paid only around Rs 36 lakh for cancellations. In October,airlines paid passengers around Rs 6.41 lakh for compensations on cancellations.
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