Now Bid For A Business Class Upgrade In Air India: Airline Introduces Auctioning To Promote Transparency

Passengers who wish to upgrade their seats to business class will have to offer a bid to secure their spot, Financial Express has reported . This is being done as a part of a new scheme to enable transparency. Without having to shell out the minimum fee, passengers can upgrade their seats now through the auction.

This model works in such a way where an economy class passenger can offer a particular sum of amount to bid for a business class seat. If it turns out that the passenger has offered the highest bid, he/she will be given the upgrade.

Previously, Air India used to charge up to Rs 6,000 for the required upgrade on domestic flights and $200-1,000 on international destinations. Due to 40 per cent of the seats going vacant on the business class, the airline has been facing a financial crunch for quite a while now.

Air India hopes to generate a revenue of rupees one crore per day after the scheme is fully functional. The airline has been facing a loss of Rs 5,756 crore by March 2017 and in this fiscal year, the government has pumped in Rs 2,000 crore so far.