Letters: 'Unfare'

“Fare game” (November 29) lacks the usual editorial logic in questioning whether the use of price band in air fare “will help consumers”. To imply that forces of competition and demand and supply should determine the pricing policy is to overlook that airlines are used for urgent travel as much as they are used for leisure travel. Is it fair that a passenger who has to plan a journey immediately on hearing a piece of sad news has to dole out Rs 20,000, when an advance booking for a pleasure trip would have cost him only one-fourth of the amount? The policy of open-ended pricing is worse than that of moneylenders, who charge exorbitant interest rates depending on borrowers’ urgency. While a moneylender risks losing the principal sometimes, the airlines fleece the consumers to recover their losses by exploiting the short supply of service created by them.

Y G Chouksey, Pune