At the Delhi airport last week, a middle-aged professional, stranded after his Indigo flight was cancelled late evening, refreshed his booking app repeatedly. In the span of 20 minutes, the fare on an alternative carrier for the same route jumped three times—each time by several thousand rupees. The aircraft had not changed, the distance had not changed, and the cost of fuel had not changed. Only his desperation had. That moment captures the real policy dilemma behind surge pricing in crisis situations.

The recent cancellation of hundreds of IndiGo flights was not merely an operational failure. It became a stress test for India’s consumer protection framework in a high-concentration, algorithm-driven market.

Surge pricing is an easy villain. It is also a misunderstood one.

India does not prohibit dynamic pricing. Nor should it. Dynamic pricing in itself is simply a way of allocating scarce capacity and signalling demand. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 (CPA) does not outlaw surge pricing. What it prohibits are unfair trade practices—pricing that exploits information asymmetry, manipulates consumer choice or operates coercively.​

Section 2(47) of the CPA defines unfair trade practices in broad, technology-neutral terms, while Section 49 empowers the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) to intervene against unfair pricing methods, including those driven by digital or algorithmic systems. The law is deliberately principle-based—a recognition that........

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