India 360: 'Cheap' budget airlines

BUDGET TRAFFIC: Low cost airlines make flying democratic, but many issues need to be addressed.

      

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New Delhi: A booming aviation industry, a plethora of low cost airlines, but no corresponding increase in infrastructure - low cost airlines are now cutting corners even compromising on passenger safety at times, as exposed by the CNN-IBN Special Investigation on Air Deccan.

It seems that as the existing infrastructure struggles to cope with the booming aviation industry, customer satisfaction has become a casualty of no-frills flying.

Over the last three days CNN-IBN aired a series of reports that exposed how Air Deccan used underhanded methods to boost its bottom line. The first report showed how the airline overbooked on their flights and regularly off-loaded passengers with no explanations and no refunds.

As a direct impact of that report, the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has confirmed that they will look into the charges saying that if this is true it is a gross violation of rules. Air Deccan officials though have been maintaining that the discrepancy was actually a systems error. They have said that they are open to any audit and gladly welcome the DGCA probe.

The question that was being debated on India 360 was: Are low cost carriers compromising with the safety of the passengers?

On the panel of experts to try and answer the question were National Secretary Air Passengers Association of India, Hiren Shah and MD, GO Air, Jeh Wadia.

Are low cost airlines compromising on the safety of passengers?

On being asked if the CNN-IBN report did surprise him at all, or whether it was one of the worst-kept secrets of the phenomena called low cost flying, Hiren Shah said, “It is definitely surprising news though we have seen this happening a couple of times before. In Maharashtra we have taken steps to ensure that low cost airlines take care of the safety of the passengers is the foremost concern and use the technology to the best possible extent.”

Shah also said that such incidents have occurred in the past as well.

CNN-IBN spoke to a passengers at the Mumbai airport, who said that they had been been waiting for over four hours at the airport.

An irate passenger said that he had been waiting to collect a litter of six-week old puppies who had been booked at the Calcutta airport and were supposed to reach Mumbai airport by the 1600 hours flight. However, he was told that the flight never took off.

He said he was frantic that the puppies would not get food and water for nearly 24 hours because of the delay and added that whenever he would go to the counter to ask for information, all that the staff would say was, "we don't know the status of the flight".

The situation epitomizes what really is happening with the aviation industry today. The aforementioned incident is not that of a low cost carrier but it was an Air Sahara flight from Calcutta to Mumbai, which was supposed to take off in the morning but did not land even till 20:30 IST hours in the night.