Don’t fly by air
| AUTHOR | Anupam Manur |
| DATE | November 7, 2026 |
| CATEGORIES | Economic Policy |
Another day and another demand for price caps. A social activist filed a PIL in the Supreme Court to interfere and control the “inflated” price hikes of airfares. This a long pending PIL to curb airfares, but now, given that the festive time has brought about steep hikes in ticket prices, there was a plea for an urgent hearing, which was denied. Justice Vikram Nath’s reply to the petitioner’s counsel was brief: “Don’t travel by air. Next case.”
When I first read the headline, I was quietly and pleasantly surprised by the Supreme Court’s support for market prices. But, unfortunately, digging a bit deeper revealed otherwise. The Court only refused to hear it urgently, but the ongoing PIL still stands. The same bench called festival fares “exploitation” in January, told the government in May that there had to be “some rationalisation”, had the Centre’s draft aviation rules placed before it in a sealed cover, and warned that airlines flouting directions could be grounded. The brush-off was about urgency, not the fallacious economic reasoning behind it, unfortunately.
The application makes three claims. Fares on some routes are two to seven times their ordinary level. A rise in fuel prices can justify a marginal revision, but not this. And because air transport is an “essential service”, it must be price-regulated like railways, medicines and electricity.
Obviously, economic logic is given a skip here in the emotional appeal to control prices. Some part of the price hike is due to rise in fuel costs, but most of it is just a demand-supply readjustment. There are a fixed number of seats, but a significant spike in demand for those seats as people want to go back home to celebrate the festival with their families. This will naturally push prices higher.
The petition asks that the hike in airfares should be capped like it is done with railways. Indian railways has adopted a dynamic pricing on certain trains and on certain routes, but it is capped at 1.5x the price, which makes it all but ineffective. Ask anyone who has tried to get a confirmed berth during Diwali week as to how well that works. The prices are affordable, but the seats are simply not available. Scarcity does not disappear under a price ceiling, but is rationed by other means: waitlists, agents, connections, and Tatkal windows that open at 8:00 AM and closes at 8:03 AM.
A flight ticket price cap will bring some of these delights to the sky and will also reduce the incentive for airlines to rearrange their routes to the busier ones which are selling out.
The “essential services” argument is weaker still and irks me to no end. How can air travel be considered an essential service. Every good that has material value to people is essential to those people, so before we know it, there will be demands for price caps on everything. Flight tickets, milk, bus fares, UPI, medicines, education, movie tickets, rent, etc - the list is endless. At some point, we have got to let the markets work.