Air travel, it seems, it has taken a full circle. The Great Indian Middle Class dream of getting air-borne looks dashed and probably good times may not come back ever. So what went horribly wrong? Is it only soaring oil prices?
The dynamics of budget air travel have changed for good, as more airlines find themselves stuck on the tarmac. In fact, forget about booking profits, now they are just struggling to stay in the business.
Rajji Rai, vice-president, TAAI, confirms the downtrend and the fact that air travel, which became quite popular in recent past - especially since low-cost airlines were introduced in 1998 - has come to a full circle in a decade.
Airlines, cutting across geographies, are now putting in place emergency plans to cut costs and devising innovative programmes to keep the business going and improve their sagging bottomlines. So much so that many of them have even started cutting commission of travel agents - a trade practice of decades.
That said, there has been an increasing pressure on revising air fares and cutting down on flight schedules. Already, there has been a 20% drop in the weekly flight schedule from 10,922 flights a week in March 2008 to 8,778 flights this week.
The negative fallout has affected air passenger growth, which saw a decline of 12% last month as compared to July 2007. Several airlines have also resorted to cutting down their unprofitable routes.
24/08/08 Raja Awasthi & Vishakha Talreja/Economic Times
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment