CPI(M) MP seeks JPC or judicial inquiry into ‘exploitative airfare surge’

CPI(M) MP John Brittas on Saturday (December 6, 2025) wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting the constitution of a Joint Parliamentary Committee or a judicial inquiry into what he described as an “unprecedented disruption of civil aviation and the exploitative surge of airfares”.

Stating that millions of air travellers have, over the past few days, been subjected to an “unprecedented” collapse of civil aviation services and economic exploitation through “unbridled airfare escalation”, Mr. Brittas said the crisis following the enforcement of revised Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) norms has “exposed deep structural failures in regulatory preparedness, market oversight, and consumer protection, leaving ordinary passengers dangerously vulnerable”.

In a letter addressed to the Prime Minister, he said the sudden cancellation and delay of a massive number of flights by IndiGo, which commands a 63-65% share of the domestic market, had “paralysed” air travel nationwide. “Given this extraordinary concentration of market power, the failure of a single private operator translated into a failure of the entire system,” he said, pointing out that thousands of passengers were stranded, forced to sleep on terminal floors, and compelled to miss medical emergencies.

Mr. Brittas said while the revised FDTL norms were intended to enhance safety, their implementation “displayed a catastrophic lack of operational planning, transition preparedness, impact assessment, and regulatory foresight”. He added that “after the system collapsed under predictable pressure, the very safety norms initially enforced were hurriedly diluted or withdrawn, raising serious concerns that passenger safety was subordinated to commercial expediency”.

He said the disruption was “converted into a profiteering opportunity”, with domestic airfares skyrocketing to “extortionate levels”. “This surge was not confined to IndiGo alone; other carriers too raised fares sharply in what appears to be parallel price escalation under the cloak of algorithmic pricing,” he said.

“Numerous international passengers reportedly had to cancel their Air India tickets after their connected domestic legs operated by IndiGo were cancelled. This double burden of cancellations and fare surges enabled windfall gains at the public’s expense,” he added, arguing that what is described as ‘competition’ in Indian aviation is, in reality, a “near lockout by two dominant players”.

“In China, the three largest airlines together do not cumulatively cross 60% market share, and in the United States no single domestic airline holds more than roughly 25% share, underscoring how extreme and unusual India’s duopolistic structure is,” he said. He asserted that simultaneous privatisation and commercial operation of major airports by corporate entities had further choked opportunities for newer or regional airports.

The CPI(M) MP said that despite being fully operational, Kannur International Airport in Kerala continued to be denied “point-of-call” status for foreign carriers, even as the newly constructed Mopa Airport in Goa had been granted such access. He alleged that an airline–airport cartel appeared to be shaping aviation access. He also questioned the “inadequate” recruitment of pilots.

Expressing concern over “repeated government claims that airfares are ‘deregulated’”, Mr. Brittas noted that government rules empower the DGCA to issue binding directions against excessive or predatory pricing and oligopolistic practices.

He said that Article 73 of the Constitution extends the Union executive’s power to matters on which Parliament has legislative authority, including civil aviation. “Yet, in repeated replies to my questions in the Rajya Sabha, the government has evaded this responsibility and astonishingly maintained that no excessive pricing occurred, despite overwhelming public evidence,” he said.

He charged that the DGCA’s Tariff Monitoring Unit was monitoring only a limited sample of routes on a random basis, and questioned the government’s “silence” on why categorical recommendations of a Parliamentary Standing Committee on a related issue have not yet been implemented.

Mr. Brittas urged setting up of either a Joint Parliamentary Committee or a judicial commission of inquiry to comprehensively probe “the regulatory failures, airline preparedness, dilution of safety norms, fare escalation patterns, and the policy framework that has enabled such extreme concentration of market power”; and to examine the “urgent need for a statutory Passenger Bill of Rights”.