India gets budget airline

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2528501.stm

New budget airline planned for India

The Indian air firm Deccan Aviation is hoping to emulate the success of Easyjet and Ryanair by launching a budget airline for India.
The airline will be called Air Deccan and flights are due to begin in April.

The budget airline sector has proved to be one of the few growth areas in the aviation industry in recent times, grabbing market share from the more traditional carriers.

Captain GR Gopinath, the company’s managing director, told the BBC World Business Report programme that the airline had a huge potential market.

“If you look at India’s population we have a population of 1 billion and we have just 400 commercial flights,” he said.

“The US has one-fourth our population and has 40,000 commercial flights.”

Right time?

A previous attempt to launch a budget airline for India by NEPC failed, but Captain Gopinath said he was confident his airline would succeed.

“Timing is everything – I think it’s an idea whose time has come,” he said.

He said the airline did not intend to compete on routes run by existing operators, but it would offer fares about 30% below what people would expect to pay on established airlines.
The airline is planning to attract middle-class business travellers, and aims to serve a mixture of industrial and tourist destinations.

One of the criticisms levelled at budget airlines in Europe is that they fly to cheaper airports that are miles away from city centres.

But Captain Gopinath said this would not be a problem for Air Deccan.

“We don’t have that many subsidiary airports like in Europe and the US… because as it is, in the existing major airports the slots are not fully filled.”

And he recognised that price was not the only important factor.

“On the one hand you have to be no-frills in terms of making a low-cost airline,

“But in terms of quality and service you have to be absolutely outstanding.That is the key to success.”