Low Cost Carriers – Yeh Dil Maange More!
In the first quarter of 2005, after I had just returned from the US to India for good, I was making my first air trip out of Delhi and was flying Jet Airways when I met a friend of mine who had chosen to be an entrepreneur immediately after the engineering school. He was flying Air Deccan and made a statement that “Now that you will be an entrepreneur, Low Cost Carriers are going to be your friend.” I had smiled at his statement and continue to do so as I realize the experience behind what he said then. In the past 20 odd months, LCC airlines have indeed been a good company for me. Almost 75% of my domestic trips (personal and business) have been on the so called No-frills airlines – primarily on Air Deccan and Spicejet.
Without doubt, LCC Airlines have been a tremendous boon to the Indian Aviation industry. Not only these have made the air travel a lot more affordable but have also provided much better air-connection between various cities. Just a week back, I took Indigo Airlines – yet another low cost airline. Following were the good things about the same:
- The return ticket to Chennai was 2/3rd the cost of any other full-fare airlines, and I bought the ticket 3 days in advance.
- The planes were pretty new – which is very different from how it is with Air Deccan. Spicejet also has pretty good planes.
- The flights were all on time – contrary to how other full-fare carriers (Sahara / Jet) operate.
- The air-hostesses were, I must say, pretty cute (Kingfisher will probably be the only competition – with the balance tilting heavily in the favor of Kingfisher). I heard that the group behind Indigo Airlines also has a modeling school. I haven’t verified that but if that is true, I will only say that they have taken good care of supply-demand equation.
However, there are still certain things left to be desired in these low cost airlines. And that is the availability of decent food item that can be bought. Indigo had nothing other than cookies and cold-drinks to sell – that’s pretty lame in my opinion. Why can’t they sell some more packaged, non-perishable snacks along with tea / coffee – I am willing to pay and so were others in the flight who demanded the same.
What’s up airlines guys – am I missing something? I love you guys but yeh dil maange more. It can’t be because of the human resources - the flight did have a decent number of air hostesses for the service.
Is the focus more on the airlines or on the air hostesses
?
To answer Seema- I think Air hostess are an integral and important part of airline services!
Hey “yeh dil certainly maange more ” but most of these are running into losses..and most of the LCCs dont even own their aircrafts..
Yeh dil maange more money @ LCCs
Oh – the stress is on everything. But air-hostesses are .. oh so important!
Yep – all the LCCs are running into losses. The idea is never to start making money in the first few years – they are just getting people used to flying now.