Slyly and hoping no one would notice the government has added a 10.3% Service Tax on air tickets. Domestic passengers will have to pay upto a maximum of Rs. 103 and passengers for foreign flights have to pay upto a maximum of Rs. 515. Already air travel is horrendously taxed in India. Taxes are calculated on the original price of the ticket so even if an airline is offering tickets at low prices the added taxes make them unaffordable. Then there are airport taxes which are mandatory. Taxes on fuel can be anywhere upto 30% adding enormous tax burdens on airlines. Criminal politicians do not allow domestic airlines to show the breakdown of various costs in the prices of tickets so that passengers remain ignorant of the fact that they are being looted but on foreign flights taxes and fees are clearly shown to be equal to the basic price of the ticket. This makes air travel too expensive for some 95% of the people. However 5% of one billion is 50 million which is about equal to the entire population of Great Britain. The lying freeloading press is thus able to headline that air travel is booming in the country. This has been the winning strategy of the Congress gang since independence. Classify cars, air travel, restaurants, multiplexes as luxury and tax them so heavily that they are out of reach of the ordinary people. Then beat your breasts about the hardship of the aam aadmi, dole out animal grade food grains at subsidised rates at taxpayer expense and get votes of a populace still locked into bullock cart age. If only we could tell the cattle class people to stop being aam and demand to be khas perhaps, just perhaps, we could get rid of the filth.