No-frill airline IndiGo has pulled out of the leading online travel portal MakeMyTrip and Jet Airways drastically reduced its inventory on the site,alleging it was continuing to offer "arbitrary and opaque fares" despite directives against such fares by the DGCA. Offering opaque fares is a trade practice where a portal sells heavily discounted tickets but does not disclose the name of the airline until the payment is made by the customer. Airline sources alleged this was being done to sell predatory-priced tickets offered by Kingfisher to revive its customer base. Kingfisher has already denied any such move. A MakeMyTrip spokesperson said "we would like to maintain as before that fares and inventory on our website is controlled by the airlines. All fares are displayed as per the guidelines received and approved by airlines including the special fares that has been approved by the participating airlines." Terming the low fares as "blatant violation" of DGCA directives,an IndiGo spokesperson said "the arbitrary display of fares and opaque pricing is anti-consumer and in violation of DGCA norms and directives. We have raised this with MakeMyTrip on several occasions but,unfortunately,there has been no resolution. We were therefore left with no choice." A Jet Airways official,while maintaining that the airline has not fully pulled out from MakeMyTrip portal,said "we have limited the inventory available to them for sale." The industry sources said Jet,which has a daily inventory of about 80,000 seats on its domestic and international routes,has severely slashed its ticket sales through this online portal.
