DGCA's 2026 refund rules: what changes for agent-sold tickets

A client forwards you a headline, sometimes with a voice note: "DGCA ne 48 ghante free cancellation diya hai, mera ticket cancel karo free mein." The ticket was never bought on the airline's own app; your agency issued it through a B2B portal, and that one detail changes most of what the headline promised.

DGCA's revised refund rules for airline tickets took effect on 26 March 2026, and most of them reach the tickets your agency sells, not only ones bought direct on an airline's website. What they don't do is automatically hand an agent-sold ticket the same two perks a direct booking gets. This post sorts, as of October 2026, what actually changes for a ticket your agency issued, what was already the law before 2026, and where DGCA draws the line between what it regulates and what it leaves to your airline's agency terms.

What DGCA actually changed in 2026 (as of October 2026)

DGCA's 2026 change to ticket refunds sits in one document: Revision 3 of Civil Aviation Requirement Section 3 (Air Transport), Series "M", Part II (DGCA CAR, Rev 3), dated 24 February 2026 and effective 26 March 2026, not on the day it was issued. Four days after it took effect, a clarifying circular dated 30 March 2026 settled the question every ticketing desk was about to get asked.

Four things actually moved.

1. The agent/portal refund clock dropped from 30 working days to 14 working days (para 3(c)).
2. The "look-in" window, a free cancel-or-change after booking, doubled from 24 to 48 hours, with an exclusion: no look-in if departure is less than 7 days (domestic) or 15 days (international) from booking (para 3(e)).
3. A free 24-hour name correction for a misspelled name, limited to direct website/app bookings (para 3(l)), which DGCA's 30 March circular lists among the revised provisions.
4. A medical-emergency clause letting an airline offer a refund or credit shell when the passenger, or a family member on the same PNR, is hospitalised (para 3(m)).

A draft put out for comment on 31 October 2025 had floated a 21-working-day clock and a 5-day domestic exclusion. Neither survived: the final text shortened the clock to 14 working days and widened the domestic exclusion to 7 days.

Everything else usually quoted as "new" in 2026 was already the rule: taxes and airport levies refundable on any fare including a no-show, a credit shell only at the passenger's own choice, a cap on cancellation charges, and the carve-out that keeps an agency fee outside that cap only if it was disclosed at booking. 2026 changed the clock and the look-in, and revised the name-fix and medical clauses. It left the rest alone.

Provision by provision: what reaches a ticket you issued

The gap between a website booking and an agency-issued ticket is narrower than headlines suggest. Taxes, the credit-shell rule and the cancellation cap reach both, including the no-show scenario this blog's no-show playbook covers in full. Only two rows below are locked to the booking channel.

Provision	Website/app booking	Agency-issued ticket	Clause
48-hour look-in	Yes, if departure is 7+ days (domestic) / 15+ days (intl) out	Not automatic; check agency terms	3(e); ATC 03/2026
Free 24-hour name fix	Yes, same person, flagged within 24 hours	Not automatic; airline's terms decide	3(l); ATC 03/2026
Refund owner and clock	Airline refunds the payer directly	Airline owes it, in 14 working days	3(c)
Card payment refund	7 days from cancellation, to card	Same, if the card paid the airline	3(a)
Cash refund	Not applicable online	Only cash paid at the airline's office: immediate	3(b)
Taxes, UDF/ADF/PSF, any fare incl. no-show	Refundable	Refundable	3(d)
Credit shell	Passenger's choice, never default	Same	3(f)
Cancellation cap / your fee	Capped at basic fare + fuel surcharge; no refund-processing charge	Same cap; your fee sits outside it only if disclosed at booking	3(i), 3(j)
Medical emergency (same PNR)	Airline may offer refund or credit shell	Same	3(m)
Foreign carriers	Home-country rules; mode per 3(a)-(c)	Same	3(k)

This table reflects the CAR as of October 2026. DGCA can amend it again, so check the Section 3 CAR page before quoting a date to a client.

Why the 48-hour window does not come with your ticket

ATC 03/2026 explains this bluntly: DGCA primarily regulates airlines, not travel agents, so the look-in and the name-correction provisions "are applicable when tickets are booked through the airline's website/apps," and airlines are told to carry DGCA's standards into their commercial agreements with agents and portals instead. That isn't a loophole, it's the regulation's own logic. An airline may still choose to extend either perk to its agency or NDC channel through its own commercial terms, so check before you promise a client either answer.

The exclusion bites even on a direct booking. A domestic fare booked today for a flight 5 days out gets no look-in at all, website or not, since it falls inside the 7-day exclusion (para 3(e)); for international flights the cut-off is 15 days. For an undecided client who might cancel inside 48 hours, the practical move isn't promising a free cancellation that doesn't exist on your channel. It's steering them toward a fare with flexible change terms, or a day's wait, rather than issuing the ticket today and arguing about it tomorrow.

The 14 working days: whose clock it is

On a ticket you issue, the CAR puts the refund on the airline, which must finish within 14 working days (para 3(c)), down from the 30 working days the clause carried before, a figure still quoted verbatim in consumer commission orders from October 2025 through August 2026. Separate clauses cover payments made to the airline itself: by credit card, 7 days from cancellation, back to the card; in cash, immediately, from the airline office where the ticket was bought (paras 3(a), 3(b)). Don't quote the 7-day figure to a client who paid you by card: the airline's card clause follows the card that paid the airline, and on most agency tickets that wasn't the client's.

What the CAR doesn't say matters just as much. It never defines a "working day", doesn't say when the 14-working-day clock starts, and doesn't say whether it ends at your portal's ledger or the client's account. Until DGCA clarifies that, count from the cancellation date, Monday to Friday, as a working assumption, not a stated rule.

If the airline cancelled the flight rather than the client, the same 14-working-day clause still applies to a ticket bought through an agent: CAR Part IV (denied boarding, cancellations and delays, revised January 2023) sends refunds on airline-cancelled flights back to Part II's rule (para 3.3.5). Compensation for the cancellation itself, as opposed to refund timing, sits in the agent's DGCA playbook for delays.

Foreign carriers sit in a grey zone: para 3(k) sends them to their home country's refund rules, with only the "mode" of refund following paras 3(a) to 3(c). Don't promise an India-style 14-day clock on a foreign-carrier ticket without checking that airline's own terms.

For a flight the airline cancelled, Part IV's grievance route lets the passenger file on AirSewa (para 3.9.2) and then go to any statutory body or court (para 3.9.3). The text states no waiting period, so there's no 30-day rule to quote back to an impatient client.

Who is answerable when the refund is late

The CAR puts the refund duty on the airline, and DGCA's 30 March circular says it primarily regulates airlines, not travel agents. That helps when you chase the airline. It does not settle whether a client can still come after you.

Consumer commissions are split on exactly that question. The Telangana state commission (May 2026) upheld an order holding a booking portal jointly liable for an unpaid refund on a Jet Airways ticket, ruling that the CAR clause governs obligations between the airline and travel agents and doesn't curtail a consumer's claim against the intermediary (order). The Punjab state commission (August 2026), reading the same clause plus the portal's user agreement on a Thailand package with GoFirst flights, went the other way: it treated the portal as a facilitator, set aside interest and compensation, and directed it to pay only the hotel amount it had offered to refund (order). The National Commission, in an October 2025 order on a portal-booked ticket, had faulted the lower forums for not considering the CAR guidelines at all, while still holding the portal liable for a narrower "partial deficiency": not passing on a rescheduled flight time.

Treat "onus on the airline" as your argument with the airline, not your answer to a client. A complaint heading toward a legal notice is a question for your lawyer or CA, not a blog post.

Who holds the money between the airline paying and the client receiving it, the portal wallet, the processing fee, whether to front the refund yourself, is its own problem. It's covered in the money chain from airline to portal wallet to client.

Name corrections: the free 24-hour fix is website-only

Para 3(l) is specific: the airline can't charge to fix a misspelled name when it's the same passenger, the error is flagged within 24 hours of booking, and the ticket was booked directly on the airline's website or app. ATC 03/2026 restates that last condition. On a ticket your agency issued, the CAR doesn't impose that duty; unless the airline extends it, the airline's fare rule and your own channel decide what a correction costs.

The practical fix doesn't need a new DGCA rule. Send the issued name back to the client the moment you ticket, as plain text, not buried inside a PDF. A typo caught on the day you ticket is usually far easier to fix than one caught at the check-in counter.

The medical-emergency clause, read slowly

Para 3(m) has two tracks, and conflating them is the easiest mistake to make. Track one: the passenger, or a family member on the same PNR, is hospitalised during the travel period, and the airline "may provide either a refund or a credit shell": discretionary wording, not a guaranteed right. Track two is "all other situations": there, refunds are issued once the airline's own aerospace medicine specialist, or a DGCA-empanelled one, gives an opinion on the passenger's fitness-to-travel certificate.

Two words carry the weight: "may" and "same PNR". Read beside para 3(f), which makes a credit shell the passenger's choice, the clause leaves unclear who picks between refund and credit shell on this track, so don't promise cash back before you've asked. A relative split onto a separate PNR, common when a group books in two batches, falls outside the first track's wording. The CAR doesn't define what "all other situations" covers, so ask the airline whether that route applies, and expect it to turn on a fitness-to-travel certificate and its specialist's opinion, not a hospital bill alone.

What you must put in writing at booking

Five things belong on the quote, invoice or WhatsApp confirmation before you ticket, not after a client asks:

1. Your own cancellation or service fee. Para 3(i) caps cancellation charges at the basic fare plus fuel surcharge, but carves your own fee out of that cap only if "fully disclosed at the time of booking". An undisclosed fee gets no such cover.
2. The airline's cancellation charge and refundable amount, read off the actual fare rule, not assumed. Paras 3(g) and 3(h) require the airline to state this unambiguously; paraphrasing a fare rule correctly is its own skill.
3. The passenger's own mobile number and email on the PNR, never only yours. ATC 01/2026 (9 February 2026) made this explicit after recent disruptions in which passengers missed flight updates and refunds were delayed, with many bookings carrying the agent's contact instead of the passenger's.
4. Passenger-rights information, inside whatever ticketing document you issue on the airline's behalf; Part IV para 3.10.2 says it belongs in ticketing documents issued by GDSs and travel agents on the airline's behalf, not only the airline's own.
5. One honest line that the direct-booking look-in and free name fix don't travel with an agency-issued ticket unless the airline's own agency terms extend them.

A short version of that fifth line, to paste onto a quote or an invoice:

Ticket issued by [Agency] through [portal / airline agency channel].
Airline cancellation and change charges: as per the fare rules sent on [date].
Our cancellation service fee: ₹[X] per passenger per sector, deducted only if you cancel.
DGCA's free 48-hour cancellation and free 24-hour name correction apply to tickets
bought directly on the airline's website or app; this ticket follows the airline's
fare rules unless the airline extends them.

Worked example: one ticket, booked two ways

Example. Hypothetical, every fare and fee invented for illustration, only the dates are real. A Mumbai-Delhi one-way ticket is booked Monday 4 January 2027 for departure Friday 22 January 2027, 18 days out (outside the 7-day exclusion). Total fare ₹8,400 (basic fare ₹6,500 plus statutory taxes and levies ₹1,900, no fuel surcharge). The airline's fare-rule cancellation charge is ₹3,500; the agency's own fee is ₹300 per passenger, stated on the quote, invoice and WhatsApp confirmation before ticketing. The client cancels Tuesday 5 January 2027, inside 48 hours of booking.

Case A, booked direct on the airline's website: the look-in applies, so there's no cancellation charge; refund is the full ₹8,400, and if paid by credit card it is due within 7 days (para 3(a)), by Tuesday 12 January.

Case B, same fare, issued by your agency: the look-in doesn't attach (ATC 03/2026) unless the airline's agency terms extend it, so the fare-rule fee stands. Checked against the cap (para 3(i)), ₹3,500 sits below basic fare plus fuel surcharge (₹6,500), so it holds. Airline refund: ₹8,400 minus ₹3,500 equals ₹4,900; less the disclosed ₹300, the client gets ₹4,600. The 14-working-day clock (para 3(c)), counted Monday to Friday from the day after cancellation and ignoring holidays, a working assumption only, runs to Monday 25 January 2027.

Case C, same agency ticket, non-refundable fare: the airline may keep up to the basic fare, ₹6,500, but must still refund taxes and levies, ₹1,900 (para 3(d)), with no processing charge (para 3(j)). Less the disclosed ₹300, the client gets ₹1,600. If that ₹300 was never disclosed, para 3(i)'s carve-out doesn't cover it, and with the airline's charge already at the cap, pass on the full ₹1,900.

Case A versus Case B on an identical fare: ₹8,400 against ₹4,600, a ₹3,800 gap made of the airline's ₹3,500 fee plus the agency's disclosed ₹300. Most of that is the cost of the channel, not of the agent, which is why this conversation happens before you ticket, not after a cancellation lands.

Common questions

Agent se ticket book kiya, 48 ghante free cancellation milega?

Usually not. The free 48-hour look-in applies to tickets booked directly on the airline's own website or app; an agency-issued ticket follows the fare rule instead, unless the airline's own agency terms say otherwise. Check the fare rule before promising either answer.

Agent se ticket refund kitne din me aata hai?

On an agent or portal booking, the airline must complete the refund within 14 working days (para 3(c)), though the CAR doesn't say exactly when that clock starts or ends. The separate 7-day card rule (para 3(a)) covers a credit card that paid the airline itself, which on an agency ticket usually isn't the client's card.

Can my agent deduct a fee from the airline refund?

A fee is on firm ground only if it was disclosed to you at booking. Para 3(i) caps cancellation charges but carves the agent's own fee out of that cap when it was fully disclosed at the time of booking; an undisclosed deduction has no such cover and is hard to defend.

Can the airline put my refund in a credit shell instead of cash?

Only if the passenger chooses it. Para 3(f) makes a credit shell the passenger's own prerogative, not an airline default, except on the medical-emergency track (para 3(m)), where the airline may offer either.

Do these rules apply to foreign airlines too?

Partly. Para 3(k) sends foreign carriers operating to or from India to their home country's refund rules, with only the mode of refund following paras 3(a) to 3(c). Whether the 14-working-day figure itself binds them isn't spelled out, so check that airline's own policy rather than assuming it.

The short version

• DGCA's refund CAR (Section 3, Series M, Part II, Rev 3) took effect on 26 March 2026; a clarifying circular followed on 30 March 2026.
• The free 48-hour look-in and the free 24-hour name fix apply to tickets booked directly on the airline's website or app, not automatically to an agency-issued ticket.
• On your ticket, the airline owes the refund within 14 working days (card paid to the airline: 7 days; cash at the airline office: immediate), and the CAR never defines when that clock actually starts or ends.
• Statutory taxes and levies, the credit-shell choice and the cancellation cap were already the rule before 2026; the 2026 revision touched the clock, the look-in, the name-fix clause and the medical clause.
• Your own cancellation fee sits outside the cancellation cap only if you fully disclosed it at booking; put it in writing before you ticket.
• Put the passenger's own mobile number and email on the PNR, never only yours (ATC 01/2026).
• The medical-emergency refund is discretionary and keyed to the same PNR, not a guaranteed right, and consumer commissions are still split on whether "onus on the airline" shields the agent too.