Click to play videoMumbai: Rising crude prices is impacting low-cost airlines who are reworking their strategy to tide over the crisis.
So flying may not quite be the simple, smart or mass experience that budget airlines like Deccan, Go Air or SpiceJet wanted it to be.
Rising fuel prices have pushed air ticket fares up by 15 to 18 per cent this year. But that hike in fares does not cover the 30 - 43 per cent rise in plane fuel prices.
And so, airlines have been taking a hit of up to 25 per cent on their own books. Now - many believe its time do something about this impossible situation.
"We have consciously cut down on a lot of short sector flights. That's an ongoing part of network rationalisation that we have done," Samyukth Shridharan, Chief Commercial Officer, SpiceJet, says.
Apart from pulling back from shorter routes the airlines are also trying to ensure they run a packed house on key city routes.
"In order to get more loyal customers who have possibility of flying in the morning and coming back in the evening we are giving more frequencies to keep the highest load factors," Edgardo Badiali, CEO, GoAir, says.
Besides juggling routes, budget airlines like Deccan and JetLite for the first time - are introducing loyalty programmes.
SpiceJet and Go Air have special corporate packages with flexible schedule and cancellation policies.
So why this added emphasis on the customer? Because holiday and leisure passenger growth is likely to tread into negative territory if ai rfares continue to rise this year.
That is according to the latest Citigroup analyst report and so airlines will do all they can to capture business traffic from one another.
So far - business travelers accounted for 25 to 30 per cent of the total passengers of budget airlines while 42 per cent were holiday travellers.
But number of corporate travellers has already risen to 38 per cent now and is expected to touch 45 per cent.
That increase experts say is because many business travelers are now migrating from full service airlines to budget airlines.
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