Kulula.com
The Competition Commission (CompCom) issued a stern warning on Tuesday night to local airlines around price gouging, following the grounding of Comair at the weekend which has seen a surge in demand for flights on other airlines ahead of the upcoming long weekend.
Last Saturday 12 March 2022, the South African Civil Aviation Authority announced that it had suspended with immediate effect the Air Operator Certificate of Comair Pty Ltd, with its subsidiaries Kulula.com and British Airway.
Consequently, this suspension meant that significant airline seat capacity had been removed from the market and that would undoubtedly result in travellers having to scramble up the remaining tickets in higher fare buckets.
"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 [for a] single flight ticket from Johannesburg to Cape Town," it added.
"Whilst the Commission understands that the removal of airlines does certainly have an impact on the airfares, the situation that stranded passengers find themselves in should not be unduly exploited by other airlines," CompCom said.
The commission encouraged all airlines that are operating to put more capacity into the market, where possible, until the Comair situation has been resolved, in order to assist stranded passengers with more moderate prices.
"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," it said.
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.
report: Moneyweb
Kulula.com announced on Tuesday that they remain grounded and offered solutions to their stranded customers.
Despite our very best efforts, the CAA suspension remains in place for Comair. We regret that flights on 16 March have thus been cancelled and apologise for the inconvenience. We continue to engage with the CAA to have the suspension lifted.
— kulula (@kulula) March 16, 2022
