oppn parties Unfair Practice In Online Flight Ticket Booking Must Stop

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  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
Unfair Practice In Online Flight Ticket Booking Must Stop

By Ashwini Agarwal

If you have ever made a flight reservation on any of the travel websites, you must have encountered the unfair practice of these sites to pre-tick certain add-on boxes for you. In your hurry to book the ticket, you will more often than not overlook these small charges and end up paying much more for your ticket.

The main, costly and unnecessary box that is pre-ticked is the one for flight insurance. In a rush to book the ticket, I had once overlooked to untick it. My flight got delayed by over four hours. I lodged a claim with the insurance company asking for compensation. But they replied saying that it was payable only in case the flight was delayed by over 5 hours. Are flights usually delayed by that much? It is just a ploy to extract a premium from passengers without any reason. Then, there are several other boxes like making a donation for a cause etc. which are pre-ticked. This practice should stop immediately.

The whole point in having add-ons or extra facilities is providing the customer with a choice. But once the boxes are pre-ticked, the choice is taken away. Airlines or websites that facilitate ticket booking can list the facilities they provide but they cannot pre-tick any for the customer. It is upon the customer to tick the boxes for the facilities he wants to avail.

By pre-ticking the boxes, the airlines and the websites are indulging in an unfair practice. For those who are not aware and for those who are in a hurry, these pre-ticked boxes are a drain on their resources and unfairly inflate the price of tickets. The airlines and websites must voluntarily desist from doing so, failing which the government must step in to rectify the situation.