’’Everytime we fly, the Economy looks UP’’ thats wat is the punchline of Airdeccan, Southwest Airlines made it first in the west and the Indian sky was hit first by Airdeccan as the first Indian Low Cost Airlines, LCAs - as they are better known as.Few call it an irrational and illogical business behavior of Mr. Gopinath as they believe that this is just his way of fulfillin his dream for every Indian to fly and not business, whatever it is, i believe he is a revolutionary as the entry of three other LCA companies in 3 yrs is not at all bad and proves that Indian low cost airline sector has a lot of scope.
The LCAs target the train travellers, basically the first class and premier second class travellers. But the million dollar question is how can they do that, I mean how can they afford providing so low cost and economic fairs, well they cut down the cost on various added facilities which the target customer would look upon as luxury, which would include:
Meals - no meals provided.
Extra luggage, as Airdeccan and other LCAs provide 20kg instead of 30kg
Cut down costs on tickets by providing online reservations
Early bird ticket booking system, helps securing seats reservation in advance, helps cut costs.
Increasing the utilization of the Space in the Plane by removing the kitchen space n placing extra seats there.
Having lesser number of Airhostesses in the flight.
By having point to point flights instead of having connecting flights, this reduces the delay in flights hence the flights can have more trips in a day and the flyers dont have to keep waiting for long.
Hence due to above reasons and may more, LCAs are successful in making the dream come true, the dream of flying.
Talking about AirDeccan, I think it is doing really well by continously updating the various strategies and schemes according to the need but there are major limitations and threats that it is facing, according to me these are:
the rising fuel prices
unjust competition by carriers like Kingfisher
Poor infrasturcture to support , like the smaller number of airports that it can use as they would cost less for it than other airports.
Delays in flights that are caused due to poor staff training
The image in the minds of people as LCA are poor quality travels.
The security and technical pitfalls.
But then if u compare the price you pay and the facilities you get, i think u cudnt ask for more.Hence, thought Airdeccan is the pioneer in the field of LCA, it needs to look back and plan upon few of the factors, wat I think is it needs the support of the government of India to help the growth of LCA by developin proper infratstructure and lenient policies.
Anyhow, Air deccan’s common man truly represents the comman man of India and I think on Republic Day , its a great achievement for not only Mr.Gopinathan but for all of us Indians.