Now, IRCTC to sell airline tickets

With over 800,000 railway tickets booked on its website every day, IRCTC, a Railways PSU, has now decided to expand its services and sell airline tickets too. The corporation is planning to introduce the new service on its website soon with the aim to help “travellers get all travel-related solutions at a single source”.

“A traveller planning to go to the hills up North needs to go to separate places to buy rail and airline tickets. He can make the bookings for both rail and airlines at our website,” said IRCTC Managing Director Rakesh Tandon.

On other goals of the corporation which at present is in the midst of sprucing up its catering services, Tandon said they plan to introduce service-linked incentive to contractors offering catering services on board trains.

“We will set scores for each train and then link them to the incentive scheme to improve quality of catering services,” Tandon said. IRCTC handles catering services in as many as 400 trains.

Asked about the poor condition of pantry cars in several trains, he said IRCTC is trying to improve the conditions of such pantry cars.

“We have identified that 18 per cent of the pantry cars are in bad shape and initiated steps to improve their conditions,” Tandon said, adding that the problem in most of the pantry cars was with water boilers and hot cases.

The corporation of late had come under lot of flak for the quality of catering services. It is already working on a catering policy that will be unveiled in the coming months. Tandon said Railways are also planning to have AC pantry cars to improve services and maintain a hygienic environment.