A low cost airline or carrier is one that proffers air travel at normally very low rates by cutting down on expensive customary in-flight passenger services. These low cost carriers are often also referred to as no-frills airlines. The concept originally incepted in the United States in the early 1990s. While Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines was the forerunner in Britain, Qantas occupied a huge portion of the Australian budget skies.
It was only a matter of some time before the Indian airline industry too caught up on this trend. It was the Air Deccan, which introduced the budget flight model to Indian skies in 2003. Simplifly Deccan is an airline based in Bangalore. Currently, it’s operating 350 flights to 64 destinations a day within India. However, barely a year after Air Deccan took to the skies came the news about Dr. Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines joining the race.
With the air fare almost reduced to that of train fare, the inception of no-frills airlines unleashed a fierce cut-throat competition in the Indian aviation scenario like never before. In order to grab a bigger pie in the suddenly escalating numbers of train commuters turning towards air travel, all leading domestic airlines slashed their fare rates and unveiled Advanced Purchase schemes (Apex) to take on the new challenger.
The present list of low cost airlines in India includes Spice Jet, Go Air, Indigo, Jet Lite, Jet Airways, Sahara and Air India Express. Since the Indian air industry continues to remain largely under-penetrated, there’s still a lot of scope for the growth in this sector. The budget carriers keep coming up with new ideas and incentives to grow their customer base. The budget airline industry in India is expected to grow significantly in coming years.
