Ticketing racket: Jr minister teaches Air India a lesson

There are more reasons to hope that Air India is changing for the better.

According to a report published in the _Daily__Mail,_Minister of State for Civil Aviation K C Venugopal may have busted a ticketing racket in Air India after he saw 23 seats vacant in his flight even as a Kerala minister was denied a ticket due to non-availability of seats in the same flight.

Two customer service staff have been suspended for “negligence” after the ministry lodged a complaint with the airline, the report said.

Venugopal was on board a Delhi-Kochi-Thiruvananthapuram flight on January 4, when the incident happened

The question is was the non-availability of ticket a mere technical glitch or part of a deliberate attempt to help private carries? The company has launched an enquiry into it.

If it is part of a racket, you need not look anywhere else for a reason for the Rs 28,000 crore loss the company has accumulated over the years.

According to the report, the charge for a Delhi-Kochi-Thiruvananthapuramticketthat day was Rs 30,000 and with 23 seats vacant the total loss for the airline would be Rs 6.9 lakh.

Now, how many times this might have happened over the last many years?

However, there are no reasons yet to believe that there is a racket running.

According to a PTI report, the probe found that two groups of passengers were supposed to travel by that flight as per the ‘summary sheet’. However, one of these groups had not been ticketed though PNR (Passenger Name Record) numbers were issued to them, airline officials said.

The customer service staff only saw the ‘summary sheet’ but did not pull out the PNRs to check whether tickets had been issued to this group, they said, adding that this led the flight to operate with 23 vacant seats.

Racket or not, the incident definitely serves as a proof of theinefficiency of the company and its officials.

The promptness with which Venugopal acted is a silver lining for the airline, which has improved its performance recently.

Even the employees’ union is behaving more responsibly. According to the _Daily__Mail_report, the Air India Employees’ Guild, instead of seeking a reinstatement of the suspended staff, has demanded an investigation into the matter.