Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Supreme Court that the Centre has finalized the much-awaited rules to regulate airfare pricing, securing administrative approval for their immediate release. The government committed to publishing the regulations within two weeks, a timeline that directly addresses the court's impatience with years of passenger complaints. This move effectively ends the regulatory vacuum that allowed private carriers to deploy opaque algorithm-based pricing without oversight.
The bench, led by Justice Vikram Nath with Justices R Mahadevan and Justice Aparesh Singh, was hearing a public interest litigation highlighting the absurdity of dynamic pricing spikes and the sharp reduction of complimentary check-in baggage from 25 kg to 15 kg. The petitioners argued that current practices amount to arbitrary extortion, forcing travelers to pay premium prices for basic necessities. The court’s intervention stems from the observation that airlines have treated passenger fares as a variable revenue stream rather than a fixed service cost.
Earlier in the proceedings, the Centre had submitted a draft of the proposed rules in a sealed cover, which the judges perused before returning them to the government for refinement. The Centre then requested three weeks to finalize the text, a window that the court has now compressed. The finalized rules are expected to target surge pricing mechanisms and standardize excess baggage charges, removing the discretion airlines previously held to alter terms at short notice.
The court has set November 16 as the hard deadline for the matter to be listed, by which point the published rules must be placed before it. Any delay beyond this date risks judicial contempt proceedings. For now, travelers face a brief limbo period before the new regulatory framework becomes legally enforceable.