Flying by Local Class…

Many centimeters of newspaper editorials have been devoted to the rising commercial aviation in India, its accessibility to the common man & an overall change of times in the domestic travel industry. The ease of reach ability of these services can be attributed to the recent spurt of no-frills, low-frills, & extra frills airlines to cater the domestic junta out here. But there's more to it than that meets the eye. This is my attempt to look at it from a different perspective.

Based on my experience of flying from Delhi to Hyderabad by one such no-frill airline & from Hyderabad to Mumbai by another low-frill airline, the service encountered therein urged me to blog about it.



Ok, few of the things that characterizes flying in domestic sector are:

1. The passengers are not allocated a seat number along with Boarding pass. The result being that as soon as the boarding commences, passengers are hasty to grab the seat nearest to exit or a window seat, as per desires. In most cases, first time travelers would vie for a window seat to get a peek of bird eye’s view. I can already imagine a situation in future, when the cabin crew would be offered some chai-paani to book seats as per the choice of the passengers – similar to what a coolie does in unreserved compartments of express trains.

2. After the boarding pass is allotted & one waits at the lounge, one would witness a scene similar to state transport bus stands. Various airlines have counters placed near the lounge exit with their representatives yelling at the top of their pitch to announce departure of their respective flights. Like, when waiting at Delhi airport, I heard one such rep announcing: “XYZ airlines ICXXX Delhi to Bangalore – boarding has started. Everyone, please form a queue at gate # 2”. This easily reminisced me of the conductor standing next to a bus in Jaipur bus stand: “Bus # 7202 Jaipur se Delhi ke liye nikalne wali hai.” This was not comparable to a railway station where a sound system is used to make announcements.

3. For the same matter, Hyderabad airport is comparatively better since it has a functional sound system in place to announce departure & arrivals of the flights. Or may be, in Delhi, the presently installed sound systems may not be able to manage the rush of flights.

4. The ordeal of flying by evening & late night flights is tumultuous. On an average, these flights are usually late by almost 30 to 45 minutes, which frustrates the passengers waiting at the lounge, subjected to the chaos & rest rooms comparable to the one found at railways stations & bus stands.

5. Within the flight, one can have only month old magazines to read, high priced snacks & subdued service from cabin staff. Well, these aspects can be justified by calling it a no-frill airline.

6. The saga of suffering doesn’t just end here. At the destination airport, collecting the checked in baggage & commuting from the airport to the city by auto / taxies adds to the woes. Well, this happens irrespective of flying by a no-frill, low frill or extra frilled airline.

On further thought, the private aviation companies cannot do anything about this state of air travel.

Considering the simple economics, when I recently traveled from Hyderabad to Mumbai, I paid a total of 1,574 bucks. Out of this, only 199 bucks ends up in to the airlines kitty. Rest of it is tax. Meaning, a substantial chunk of the airfare finds its way in to the government coffers. Hence, even though airfares have decreased, the government coffers must be brimming with the tax revenues. Screech! Brakes! The buck stops here. Once at the behest of government, it may not be considered fair to expect any better service or any fair account of money paid as tax

Finally, I hope that when the private players take over management of the airports, the experience improves overall, which is essential if ITDC is keen to make India as a favorable tourist destination. Else, foreigners traveling to India would carry with them similar memoirs of “Flying by Local Class”…