Competition Commission warns against ‘price gouging’ amid spike in air fares
The rise in the price of airline tickets follows the South African Civil Aviation Authority’s decision to ground Comair flights.
The grounded flights have taken the option of buying Kulula.com and British Airways tickets off the table for consumers.
It’s not known when the flights will resume.
“It has now emerged that there are reports and complaints of large increases in price for seats on the remaining airlines some even quoting R5000 single flight ticket from Johannesburg to Cape Town,” says spokesperson for the commission Sipho Ngwema.
Ngwema said the suspension of Comair should not be exploited by other airlines
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“Whilst the commission understands that the removal of airlines does certainly have impact on the airfares, the situation that stranded passengers find themselves in should not be unduly exploited by other airlines.”
According to Ngwema, the commission may consider the act airlines removing seats from low fare options as ‘price gouging.’
“In addition, where the commission finds that airlines have actively removed seats from low fare buckets and allocated them to higher priced fare buckets or introduced new much higher fare buckets on popular routes, then the Commission may consider this an act of price gouging designed to deliberately exploit the current situation.
“The commission will also be engaging airlines over the next few days to establish what plans they have in place to address the current situation and any complaints from travellers about prices in the market,” added Ngwema.
