No to Onboard Service Cuttings in the Airlines in India

If there is one area that airlines are refusing to touch even when they are flying low, it is their service offerings.

Some like Vijay Mallya-owned full-services carrier Kingfisher Airlines Ltd and Jeh Wadia’s budget airline GoAir are even introducing new services to boost demand and earnings.

Kingfisher, which is buried under the crushing dues owed to the Airports Authority of India (AAI), aircraft leasing firm GE Commercial Aviation Services (GECAS) and others, is revisiting its plans of serving free meals onboard its value service class Kingfisher Red. After a delay of about a month, Kingfisher will be going ahead with its plans to offer free meals on Kingfisher Red from November 20.

GoAir has also added business class on all its flights, where some rows will have two seats occupied on either side of the aisle even though there will be three seats per row.

This goes against the true low-cost airline model, which permits only economy seats on all flights. The fares for the business class seats, which will be branded as GoComfort, will be higher than for the other seats.

Others like Jet Airways, JetLite, SpiceJet and IndiGo may not be adding new frills but they are not even trimming them. A spokeswoman for full-services airline Jet Airways said, “Our services will continue to be what they were, whenever they were introduced.”

Kingfisher’s plan to serve snacks on its aircraft was deferred “due to logistics issues on the ground with external stakeholders,” said the full-services carrier’s spokesperson. In September, Kingfisher Airlines had announced that it would start serving free meals on Kingfisher Red (erstwhile Air Deccan and Simplify Deccan) from October. “We had some issue with the packers,” said a Kingfisher Airlines executive, who did not wish to be named. He said that the airline would not charge anything for the meals that would be served on the flight.