TravelBizMonitor has provided a break-up on the Travel Agent Transaction Fee.

As per the decision, travel agents will now charge a Transaction Fee of Rs 350 per ticket on domestic Economy Class, Rs 500 per ticket on domestic Business Class, Rs 2,500 per Economy Class booklet and Rs 3,500 per Business Class booklet. Interestingly, tickets purchased for SAARC, which include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will be included under domestic travel. On international tickets, Economy Class that falls under TC1, which includes North and South America, Australia and New Zealand and TC2, which includes Europe, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Africa and South West Pacific will be charged Rs 2,500 and TC3, which includes Middle East, South East Asia and China will be charged Rs 1,200. On international Business tickets for TC1 and TC2, the charge will be Rs. 5,000 while for TC3 will be Rs 2,000. International First Class tickets will be charged a fee of Rs 10,000 on TC1 and TC2 (Including South West Pacific) and Rs 5,000 on TC3 category.

But what is positively disgusting is that the transaction fee will not be refundable and can be charged over and over again.

It has also been decided that the Transaction Fee will not be refundable and will be retained by travel agents, even when a ticket is processed for refund. The agents can charge a fee over and above the cancellation charges for any modification or cancellation. The airlines will also charge the same Transaction Fee at the City Traffic Office, Airport Traffic Office and the website.

The air transport cartel is at it, again. In all too familiar theme, we passengers must get ready to pay one more "fee".

Readers will recall that airlines decided to scrap travel agent commissions, in India, effective October 31, 2008. This move by the airlines, created an uproar in the industry and led to strikes and protests. Presently, airlines pay 5% of the base fare as sales commission on tickets issued by travel agents, without any charge to passengers.

According to the Deccan Chronicle, airlines and travel agents have mutually decided to add a new component, to be called a "transaction fee", which would be a minimum of Rs 350 for domestic and maximum of Rs 10,000 for international tickets, which will replace the existing commission.

The transaction fee will be euphemistically reflected as “other charges” on the ticket. This is over and above, other fees and surcharges like fuel surcharge, air traffic congestion surcharge, user development fee, and passenger service fee, already charged to passengers.

God forbid, the airlines defile the holy altar of "low air fares" and incorporate all these charges, which make up almost 75% of the total cost of the ticket, in to their fares.

Reportedly, the transaction fee will be at least Rs 350 on domestic air tickets for the economy class, and Rs 500 for business class.

The fee on international air tickets will be Rs 1,200-2,400 (economy), Rs 2,000-5,000 (business) and Rs 5,000-10,000 (for first class tickets). These charges will be uniform across airlines, including low-cost carriers such as SpiceJet, Indigo, Kingfisher Red, etc.

At a time when everyone is cutting back on expenses, with this new arrangement, travel agents will earn double of what they are getting right now, all for no additional effort, and all of it, on us, passengers' backs.

If you think you can avoid this mutual back-scratching "fleece the passenger party", and book directly from the airlines' websites or offices, think again. Air tickets booked through airline websites or their offices will also attract the transaction fee, and conveniently, this fee will be earned by the airline. Oh what joy. The competition which allows me to differentiate between good and bad travel agents, and enables me to demand value for money service, is simply overwhelming.

I wonder why is Mr. Patel asking for tax relief on aviation fuel ? By asking their passengers to needlessly pay even more, the air transport industry in India, seems to have already overcome this perfect storm of slowing demand coupled with rising costs.

See related story "Travel agents need to earn their income"

Anirban Chowdhury of The Business Standard reports that just four days after it was opened, the third runway at the Delhi airport was closed today after some crucial equipment stopped functioning. Operations were already restricted to daytime use after the runway lights failed over the weekend, rendering the runway unusable at night.

According to Air Traffic Controller sources at the Delhi airport, the decision to close the runway was taken after the instrument landing system (ILS), which guides aircraft to land when visibility is poor, stopped functioning in the morning.

As a result, the runway could not be used before 10:30 am and had to be shut down after 1:00 pm. (The ILS was not required during the period in-between). That left the runway with just 2.5 non-peal hours of operations with hardly any landings.

Several pilots told Business Standard that this could become a serious problem in the winter, which will descend on Delhi in a couple of months. "The faulty ILS could be a huge menace in the winters and will severely affect flights during low-visibility conditions because of the fog," said a Jet Airways pilot.

Delhi accounts for almost a third of the total air traffic in the country. The airport was handed over to GMR-controlled Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) in May 2006 for expansion and a facelift. The new runway was built to make its airport handle up to 60 flights in an hour, up from the existing 35-40, to reduce air congestion plaguing Delhi and Mumbai airports, help carriers save expensive jet fuel, and reduce waiting times for passengers.

The current problems could ground all these plans. A DIAL executive confirmed that the runway was practically closed today and only the primary and the secondary runways were used for flight operations.

However, a DIAL spokesperson defended the decision to close the runway: "As a part of the phased opening of the third runway, DIAL, the Air Traffic Controller and the Director General of Civil Aviation have agreed to ensure that any observation from users can be dealt with for further improvement and any minor work can be carried out as a new runway is also subject to daily inspections and maintenance."

The runway’s ILS, he added, was configured for low-visibility conditions, which was not required under present conditions. As it consumes a lot of energy, work was going on to reconfigure it to current visibility.

Airline pilots, on their part, said that more than 40 per cent of the new runway, which is currently only used for landing, is unusable because of an adjacent tall statue that comes in its path. For landing purposes, the runway thus becomes even shorter in length than the primary runway.

"The aircraft gets a shorter length only when it comes from the side of the statue. However, even that length is good enough for larger aircraft like the A380,” said the DIAL spokesperson.