Budget airline boom sees 25-30 per cent train passengers, 10-35 per cent first flyers checking in.
Budget airline boom sees 25-30 per cent train passengers, 10-35 per cent first flyers checking in
Figures from budget airlines suggest that 25-30 per cent train passengers have already been converted into sky-fi people. No wonder then that Milan Zatakia, national president of Air Passengers Association of India (APAI) says, “My barber prefers to fly down to Banglore to visit his family. Time is money; he can afford the luxury because it saves him two days of precious business.”
Thirty-five per cent of Air Deccan passengers are first-time flyers. GoAir sees 10 per cent of its passengers taking their first flight.
And the new flyers are a mix of students, farmers, housewives and even people in so-called menial jobs. Dairy farmer Sunek Rawal, a new flyer, does not think that flying from Ahmedabad is a luxury. “It is economical. Road or rail travel costs come up to almost the same.
Most importantly, air travel reduces the journey to just an hour,” he says. Vijaya Menon, head of corporate communications, Air Deccan, points out, “Approximately 40 seats out of 180 on our Airbus sectors are targeted at AC II-tier travellers. Our ATR sectors are mostly small cities with less or absolutely no air connectivity and therefore all the seats are targeted at train travellers. After sampling and analysis of data, we have observed that overall we have been able to attract approx 25-30 per cent of AC II- and III-tier passengers.”
Similarly, Raj Halve, chief commercial officer, GoAir explains, “Over 25 per cent of our passengers are also regular train passengers, showing the growing shift from train to rail. On sectors like Mumbai-Ahmedabad, where an overnight train journey is now reduced to a one-hour flight, this shift is even more pronounced.”
It is therefore not surprising that the budget airlines market is growing fast. While Air Deccan has grown from 0.4 million passengers to 7.3 million in just two years, Go Air has created a market share of 4 per cent within a year.
Zatakia of APAI puts it in perspective, “The budding budget airlines market reminds me of China in the early ‘90s. In those days, most passengers in a short distance Beijing-Shanghai flight would be tailors, barbers or small-time self-employed traders.”
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