The History of Air India Part 2

by Vinay Bhaskara

Earlier this week, the second part of my story of the history of Air India was posted over at AirlineReporter.com. This second part covers the tumultuous 1970s at Air India and Indian Airlines. I have posted an excerpt from that article here, but click on over to AirlineReporter.com for the full story.

Link to Story

Air India would, at various times, operate 14 Boeing 747-200s, purchasing 11 brand-new from Boeing. During the 1970s, much of the focus was, predictably, on integrating the new aircraft successfully into Air India’s operation. The Boeing 747 presented enormous operational challenges for Air India; its sheer size made much of Air India’s ground equipment, as well as its maintenance and support operations essentially obsolete. Furthermore, while airports at the Londons and New Yorks of the world (where Air India would be operating their aircraft) had the necessary infrastructure in place to handle the Jumbo, taxiways, holding areas, and parking positions at Air India’s international gateways of Bombay and Delhi were woefully inadequate. But in an interesting contrast to today’s situation, the socialist-leaning Indian government of that time quickly acceded to Air India’s demands; building up the necessary infrastructure at not only Bombay and Delhi, but Madras and Calcutta as well. Air India was even able to build brand new maintenance hangars and support buildings at Bombay with a minimum of red tape. Air India’s mechanics at the time had an extraordinary reputation for quick, efficient and thorough quality service; leading many a third world carrier to schedule a stop in Bombay for maintenance purposes.

You can find Part 1 of that story here

Airline Reporter also posted another guest post by me; which covered the Acela Express, a local train operation in the Northeastern United States (Link)

Meanwhile, over at Cranky Flier, I helped the site's author Brett Snyder out with a little research on Air India's troubles, which ended with him tagging Air India with the moniker; "Worst Airline Ever"

Also regarding Air India, Benet Wilson of Aviation Week (a.k.a Aviation Queen)published a guest post by Mr. Steven Frischling. Mr. Frischling's post contained some inconsistencies and mistakes, so Benet kindly published my rebuttal post. (Link)

Finally, be sure to check out some of the stories I've written over at Aspire Aviation (You can find all 3 articles here). I've got an interview with Virgin America CEO David Cush, an article on South American airline Pluna, and a post on American Eagle up now.A post on Frontier Airlines should be up tomorrow as well. Additionally, I have published an in depth study of Delta Air Lines' widebody operations; you can find a copy here

So readers, let me know what you think of these various posts in the comments below.

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Kingfisher CEO justifies Kingfisher Red LCC service withdrawl

By Devesh Agarwal

At Kingfisher Airline's annual general meeting last week, Chairman Vijay Mallya announced a drastic change in strategy by the stoppage of the Kingfisher Red low cost service for a focus on the full service segment.

Kingfisher Red Airbus A321 all economy cabin

In response to the myriad of media articles, many of which speculated on the possible reasons for the announcement , airline Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Aggarwal clarified and justified the change in strategy. We have reproduced the statement below without comment and edit for your unbiased reading.

We will analyse the statement at a later date.

Following an announcement made last week about Kingfisher Airlines’ (Kingfisher) focus on the full service segment of air travel, there has been a lot of speculation in sections about the media around. I would like to set the record straight and clear up any misconceptions around this announcement.

It is important to carefully analyse and understand the low cost or low fare segment of the Indian aviation industry. Let me begin by answering the most common question: Why focus on the full service product?

• Operating costs of so called low cost carriers and full service carriers in terms of fuel, airport charges, engineering and maintenance and crew costs are similar. Full service carriers incur additional costs on global distribution, in-flight catering, ground amenities and the frequent flyer programme. These additional costs are more than recovered through higher yields.
• In addition to large aircraft orders placed at time of start up in 2004/2005, the Indian LCCs in the recent months have placed orders for over 250 aircraft. In the last two years, capacity induction of the LCCs has outpaced the demand growth in the domestic market. The induction of so many additional aircraft in the low cost / low fare segment will potentially lead to substantial over capacity and a price war with declining yields.
• With continuing economic growth, business related travel is increasing significantly. Businessmen and executives prefer to fly with full service carriers because of ease of buying tickets, frequent flyer program and convenience offered. They are willing to pay extra and this segment is not as price sensitive as the classic low cost / low fare segment where there is a lot of discretionary travel involved.
• A detailed study over the last six months during the high oil price regime has clearly demonstrated that Kingfisher’s full service product has generated higher yields and load factors which is consistent with the assessment that the business travel segment is more sustainable than the extremely price sensitive low fare segment. The analysis also showed that of the incremental yield, only 25% is spent on providing the extra services associated with a full service carrier. The remaining 75% is net contribution to the bottom line.
• While there are currently five airlines participating in the low cost / low fare segment, there are only three full service carriers namely Air India. Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines. While competition certainly exists in this full service segment, such competition is tempered because of the frequent flyer loyalty programmes that are offered by each one. In short, we believe that the competition will be far more intense in the low fare space than in the full service space.
• Kingfisher Airline is widely recognised as a premium carrier and is the recipient of 38 national and international awards. The brand and service quality image is well established. This is evidenced by the higher yields and higher load factors generated on Kingfisher’s dual cabin aircraft. For the first five months of this fiscal year, based on DGCA published data, Kingfisher Airlines has delivered highest load factors of any airline in India.
• Kingfisher currently operates airbus aircraft with two cabin configurations – Dual cabin full service and Single cabin no frills. This also means the Kingfisher does not offer its premium Business Class or full service economy class product on all its routes. As a result Kingfisher is losing a certain amount of business class traffic on many routes.
• Kingfisher’s integration into the oneworld alliance is on track. oneworld is supportive of Kingfisher’s move to focus its energy and resources on a full service and premium product which is in line with the philosophy of oneworld and its member airlines.
• Over the next 4 months Kingfisher will reconfigure all its airbus aircraft including its single cabin aircraft into dual cabin aircraft with a reduced premium business class cabin and an increased number of full service economy class seats leading to a capacity increase of approximately 10%.
• The economy class will offer the same comfort as it does today. The space requirement for additional economy seats will be made available by reducing the number of business class seats.
• The reconfigured aircraft will have the seat equivalency of a low fare carrier but an opportunity to generate much higher revenue as demonstrated by current yields. Kingfisher will achieve incremental business class revenue as a result of wider and uniform availability and the airline will also generate incremental revenue through its increased full service economy class capacity.
• There will be no reduction in Kingfisher’s fleet size or its network. Our guests will continue to enjoy the benefits of Kingfisher’s network that provides connectivity to 60 domestic and 8 international destinations.

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VIDEO: Making of SpiceJet's Q400 tubro-prop

Thanks to kind friends at SpiceJet and Bombardier for your enjoyment.


It is five days of holiday to celebrate the Ayudha Pooja and Dassera festival, and we extend all our supporters warmest holiday wishes.

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