Transaction fees to be added starting November 1st.

There is another price hike lurking around the corner. Starting 1st November, it has been agreed that the Domestic airlines will now add an extra charge to the usual plane ticket you bought called the "transaction fee". This would be spread across all airlines (and even low cost carriers such as SpiceJet).

What exactly is the transaction fee? Airlines have been cutting costs of late due to the increasing fuel costs. To cut out on some of their excessive costs, they are now going to give a 0 percent commission to the travel agents.
Previously, the various airlines used to pay the travel agents a certain fee on every ticket booked. Now with this new zero commission policy in effect, the travel agents have demanded that the transaction fee be added into the ticket fare. Who has to end up paying now?The customer.

How much are these fees going to cost? According to the officials at the airline industry the transaction fee (besides other regular fares) will be in the scale of Rs.350 on domestic for the economy class and Rs 500 for business class. The fee on the international air tickets will vary between Rs 1,200-2,400 for economy, Rs 2,000-5,000 for business and Rs 5,000-10,000 for first class tickets.

Why are they charging this fee? Currently air travelers enjoyed lower fares and didn't have to pay any transaction fee, this was because airlines always gave 5 percent of the base fare as commission to the travel agents for tickets booked. But with rising air fuel prices and many airlines going into loss many international and domestic carriers have decided to write off commissions for travel agents, which is being resisted by them. However, the airlines may have to listen to the agents as almost 85 percent of their international bookings comes to them through this channel (including online agencies).

This is in addition to recent airfare hike of upto 5 percent from carriers such as Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways on all their tickets after this festive season.

What does it mean for iXiGOers ? There could be some reason to cheer. With agency commissions going down to zero, iXiGOers can almost always expect a lower fare than any online travel agency / online travel merchant. This is because airlines will always have lowest charges on their own website. Using iXiGO you can bypass these online travel agents and book directly with the airline - less hassles, lower prices, always !