Air Deccan goes for an image overhaul

With better services, new colours and an attitudinal shift, the pioneer plans to unseat Jet.

BANGALORE: When the problem is understood, can the solution be far behind?

After a three-year flight replete with all manner of snafus, to be charitable to the pioneer, not all of it was of its own doing — Air Deccan has become the No 2 airline in the country with a 21.2% market share in June.

Now, says managing director GR Gopinath, the flight to the pole position has begun.

And its flight path to it is higher service standards and a complete makeover of image.

It goes way beyond just switching the colour of tee-shirts worn by employees from blue to yellow.

The airline is now looking at improving its on-time performance and passenger service; reduce number of cancellations and customer complaints even as it maintains the lowest fares in the market.

Gopinath says surging ahead of Jet is inevitable with the kind of operation expansion his airline has planned over the next few years.

“Overtaking Jet is inevitable. It is a reality, and we won’t even have to work for it. But before we become the No 1, we want to become the best.”

Being the best, however, may take tremendous effort on the part of Deccan; not just in terms of financial investment but also in terms of attitudinal shift.

Nonetheless, the airline has already kicked off the exercise.

Over the last nine months, the airline has brought down its flight cancellations to less than half from 597 in January to 234 in August. It has also improved on-time performance during the same period from 58.61% within 15 minutes and 87.11% in an hour to 76.40% and 98.33% respectively.

Last three months have seen its on-time within 15 minutes range between 76% and 79% and within an hour, it is hovering at around 98%. The no-frills airline has also pruned the percentage of complaints per 1000 passenger from 13.6% (on 3.19 lakh passengers) in January to 6.82% (on 4.21 lakh passengers) in August.

Such performances are giving it the confidence to commit to passengers on service standards. It is kicking off a month-long WOW campaign beginning September 19 under which, if an Air Deccan flight is delayed over three hours flyers would unconditionally be getting a free ticket (except in cases of delay due to fog), and in case of cancellation, he would be put on another flight, subject to availability.

And as it embarks on the campaign, the airline has entered into Rs 460 crore ($10 million) agreement with Lufthansa for component and maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) support and another Rs 230 crore ($5 million) agreement with aerospace companies — Airbus ($3 million) and ATRs ($2million) — for engineering support.

“One of the reasons for high cancellations was inadequate engineering support and ready availability of components. Now with the agreement with Lufthansa, we will have on-site stock of spare-parts at all our bases. Also, 35 Airbus and ATR engineers will train our technicians and engineers. This will improve our operational efficiency considerably,” says Air Deccan CEO Warwick Brady.

The airline’s performance had also suffered because it had no hangar. Now, it is taking care of that too. By December, it will be completing the construction of the hangar at Chennai airport. But more than anything else, analysts say it is the volumes that will give Air Deccan a natural advantage over others.

Over the past one year, the number of passengers flown by the airline has swelled 230% from 2 million in September, 2005, to the current 6.6 million. By the end of this year, it is expecting to touch 7 million, a magical figure the airline had been waiting for long. “Once we reach it, we will have good control over yields,” quips Brady. And once yields are in its control, the game would be as good as won.