When Indian aviation was introduced to the concept of unbundling, some of the airlines went berserk and wanted to charge for pre-blocking on any and every seat. The government caged them down to offering at best 25% of the seats on a plane, and middle seats could not be charged for pre-blocking, at all.

Anyhow, under a new regulation that came into effect just a few days back, it turns out DGCA has allowed airlines to charge for all seats on the plane. The earlier regulation read as follows:

Seat offered on opt-in charge basis shall not exceed 25% of the total seat
configuration of the aircraft. Middle seats shall not be offered for preferential seating
except for the seats in the first row and the emergency exit row.

In the new regulations, put out on the DGCA website today, this section has been removed. The rationale given is to allow big groups to get the capability to travel together by paying for seats.

How the various airlines will play this out is still unknown, because no one has made their first move on raising prices or allocations right away. We’ll see what happens here. I fully expect Indigo to be the first mover on monetising this new circular.

What do you think will be the impact of this new circular from DGCA?

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