I am Aditya and I booked a round trip flight from Chennai to Bangkok with Air Asia for me and my wife from Dec 26, 2014 to Jan 2, 2015. I wanted to change my flight dates. My original flight cost was INR 25830 including all taxes and fees. I checked Air Asia website for the new dates – Feb 26, 2015 to Mar 3, 2015 and saw that the new flight cost would be INR 24910 including all taxes and fees. According to section 5.3.a of Air Asia’s terms and conditions (http://www.airasia.com/my/en/about-us/terms-and-conditions-fd.page), since the new trip cost is lesser than my original trip cost, I will not be refunded the original trip cost. On top of this, according to Fee Schedule (http://www.airasia.com/my/en/our-fares/fees-and-charges.page), my total Flight Change fee is INR 6000 for two adults for the round trip. I logged into my account and modified the dates of my itinerary. My return trip cost had jumped from INR 5438 per adult to INR 7635. Please see attached screenshot. I called Airasia customer care. They explained that the airasia system takes the higher fare when changing flight dates even though a lower fare is available. Another customer care executive told me that the flight fares change day-to-day. The supervisor, Mr. Nandakumar agreed that Airasia website is showing two different fares but couldn’t explain why. He told me he would escalate the situation to the back end team. Back end team didn’t respond with correct answer. Now Nandakumar is also not picking up the call when I call customer care. I have escalated this to both the Nodal Officer and Appellate officer, but received no help. Air Asia is charging me Rs.2200 per person more than a fresh booking only because I want to change my flight dates. If I had not checked the fare before logging into my account, I would not have known that Airasia is overcharging me for the exact same service. Also, since I have already booked my flight with them, they have the power to increase the fare to whatever they like since if I cancel my flight, I will not get any refund except airport taxes and fees.

I want a full refund of my booking as well as Rs. 10 lakhs as punitive damages for mental stress, waste of time and loss of money due to waste of time.

Email Id: dhatraditya@gmail