All of us have been tempted by the low fares that airlines keep offering. A ticket for a mere ₹100 does sound tempting and a ₹1 ticket sounds even better. Many of us have also used such low fares for impromptu holidays or weekend getaways.
However, how low are these low-fare tickets? Not very, and for some unlucky ones, they can also mean spending a lot more for the same journey.
First of all a ₹100 ticket does not mean that the actual amount you pay is ₹100 as over and above this you will also have to pay a number of taxes on which there are no discounts offered. In most cases, these work out to be quite a significant part of the final fare. The discount is only offered on the base fare and the fuel surcharge. A ticket, however, also includes statutory taxes such as passenger service fees, user development fees, airport development fees and service taxes which are not offered on a discount.
So a ₹100 ticket means that you pay ₹100 plus all these taxes. These taxes vary from airport to airport so a ticket from, say, Chennai to Mumbai and Chennai to Delhi will surely not cost ₹100 each. Then Delhi charges both a departure and an arrival tax which form a part of even a low-cost ticket while the other airports only charge a departure tax.
What the airlines promoting the low-cost tickets also don’t tell you is for how many seats on each sector these low fares are available. So you may plan an impromptu trip and realise that all the low-cost tickets are already booked on that particular sector.
Then both airline websites and online travel agents too charge a convenience fee, which too adds to the total amount paid for the ticket.
All this doesn’t end here. Many of these low cost tickets also come with the proviso that they are non-refundable. What this means is that the base fare and the fuel surcharge will not be returned in case you decide to cancel your trip.
Now if you are booking a discounted ticket with a basic fare of ₹100 or are lucky enough to get some of the ₹1 tickets that some airlines are offering then the loss might not be that much. But if you have booked at a higher level the loss will be proportionately higher. The airline is supposed to refund the other charges but how soon and after how much of running around you are able to get these is, of course, another matter altogether.
So the only way to make the best of these offers is first of all to be absolutely certain of your travel dates so that you don’t have to cancel or change your date of travel and equally importantly to be ready to accept the fact that a ₹100 ticket is going to actually cost you a lot more.
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