Jat stir: Additional flights to be operated for passengers

New Delhi: With public transport system in Haryana severely hit by the Jat stir for quota, the Civil Aviation Ministry has asked airlines to operate additional flights from here to Chandigarh, Amritsar and Jaipur to enable stranded people reach their destinations.

As part of this, all major domestic operators including Air India, Jet Airways and IndiGo will fly additional services from and to Delhi, an official release said.

Air India also said that it is offering special nominal fares for its additional flights.

"Air India has again spread its wings to fly out passengers stranded due to the sensitive situation along all surface transport routes in the adjoining areas arising out of the Jat agitation," the airlines said in a release.

"AI is operating an additional flight from Delhi at 1730 hours today on the Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar-Delhi sector to fly stranded people," it said.

Air India is charging a nominal all-inclusive one-way fare of Rs 3,339 for Delhi-Chandigarh journey while it will charge Rs 3,960 for a Delhi-Amritsar trip, the airline said.

Jet Airways will operate additional flight on the Delhi-Amritsar-Delhi route.

Budget carrier, SpiceJet will fly three additional return services today from Delhi for Jaipur, Amritsar and Chandigarh, the release said.

Budget airline IndiGo will operate two additional services tomorrow to Chandigarh and Jaipur from the national capital and back, it said. 

Amid reports that some airlines were overcharging and that some travel portals were exhibiting fares as high as Rs 89,000 for an indirect flight to Delhi from Chandigarh, Jet Airways today said it was not charging "high" air fares for flights.

"Most Jet Airways direct flights to/from Amritsar, Chandigarh, Jammu, Srinagar, Leh and Dehradun have been sold out.

Some fares seen on third party online travel portals are constructed by those websites by combining the last available seats on indirect routes with multi-stop flights constructed over any mid-point transfer city to create a roundabout itinerary. In many cases Premiere (business class) cabin fares are shown," a Jet Airways spokesperson said.

"The higher fares that are referred on third party travel portals are the combination of fares over multi-stop flights. These fares are not available on Jet Airways website," he said.

"Such fares will be influenced by the availability of seats on these two different flights and hence will be generally higher than the direct non-stop flights. It is important to note that the journey times on these itineraries referred to are significantly higher than the direct flight," the spokesperson said.

"We are working with third party travel portals to not show such roundabout itineraries with last available Premiere cabin seats," it said.