South Africa’s Competition Commission has warned the country’s operating airlines against the ‘price gouging’ of passengers left stranded by the grounding of airliners operated by Comair, and so urgently seeking seats on alternative operators. Comair operates the British Airways in South Africa and Kulula low-cost carrier brands, and its Air Operator Certificate was suspended by the South African Civil Aviation Authority on Saturday.

“[T]his 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 [sic],” said the Competition Commission in a statement released on Wednesday. “It has now emerged that there are reports and complaints of large increases in price for seats on remaining airlines some even quoting R5 000 [for a] single flight ticket from Johannesburg to Cape Town.”

The Commission understood that the sudden reduction in air passenger capacity would certainly lead to an increase in air fares, but stranded passengers should not be “unduly exploited” by the remaining carriers. It urged those airlines that were still flying to increase their capacity, until Comair’s issues had been resolved, so that they could provide seats for the stranded Comair passengers at “more moderate” cost.

The Commission gave the assurance that it would be holding talks with airlines in the next few days. These discussions would cover any passenger complaints about ticket prices but also what plans the airlines had, to deal with the situation caused by the grounding of Comair’s operations.

“[W]here 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 highlighted. “The Commission wishes to warn airlines [it] will not hesitate to act swiftly and decisively if there’s evidence of price gouging.”