Get ready to pay more if you want to sit next to your family member in a flight

Most of us want to travel with our families and airlines have decided to make a business out of it. Now the airlines will charge a customer more if he/she wants to sit together in a flight.

The scheme is being called the 'seat selection fee' or 'family fee', debuted over eight years ago, but in India it's only this year that this fee has emerged in a ruthless avatar.

Air India introduced the fee in May. Private carrier Jet Airways, however, revised its seat selection fee recently.

According to a circular sent to travel agents on December 12, a comprehensive seat selection fee chart which charges different fees depending not just on the destination, but also the month and date of travel.

"On flights between India and the Middle East, and Asian countries, the categories are high season, peak season and other months. It's evident that when the revenue they earned from baggage fees and cancellation fees came down, Jet increased the seat selection fee," an aviation consultant, requesting anonymity, told ET.

This move came in after the stopping of baggage fees and cancellation fees this year by the Indian aviation regulator, DGCA. Airlines, so as to increase their ancillary revenue from non-ticket sources, have inclined towards this.

National carrier Air India on its website hasn't even bothered with the particulars. The website puts a "blanket preferred seat price" of Rs 3,500 per seat on flights to the US and Rs 3,000 per seat on flights to the UK, Far East, Europe and Australia. But an Air India spokesperson said that the said fee was applicable only for front row seats.

Sudhakara Reddy of Air Passengers Association of India, a consumer rights body, said: "The DGCA should carry out a comparative study on the seat selection fees charged by airlines in other countries. But it has not yet come out with the revised guidelines on all the charges that airlines can levy for unbundled services (ancillary revenue sources). They should put the guidelines on their website for the passenger to refer to readily.''