airfares@1re.isn't it incredible? or is it ludicrous? hard to say. but now that is the ground reality. gone are the days of monopoly by indian airlines.we now have jet airways,sahara,kingfisher,spice and air deccan all over our skies.and some of them daring to venture beyond.
but then you needed a guy like captain gopinath to set the place on fire. audacious,innovative,lots of chutzpa. his inagural flight about a year ago ran off the tarmac. a bit superstitious as i am,i thought it was a bad start. no fears.he is blowing great guns. he was the one who came out with the one buck fare. limited seats in every air deccan flight for re 1. the exact modus operandi though not clear to me. it is,i am told on a first come basis. but then people are excited. flying from bangalore to delhi for re 1 is more than a steal. of course they have to pay some re 221 as taxes bringing the fare to re 222. but then that is small change.
when this scheme was announced,the air deccan call center received more than 10,000 calls and its website had more than 50,000 hits. someone said what will happen to their image,if they sell tickets so cheap.
the inspiration for col gopinath comes from cartoonist r k lakshman whose 'common man' is the brand ambassador of the airline.and the suggestion for re 1 airfare seems to have come from lakshman.
the irony of it is that when it was first introduced early this month an infosys employee flew on a re 1 ticket! col gopinath wants more people to fly. that makes sound economic sense. and he is going to make it possible. it is a miracle and nobody is complaining.
now how does the math work out. let us take a chota break.
4 comments:
i guess they keep their costs low, and encourage people to buy their refreshments in the flight.
and i agree with you about the re1 fare, my daughter's paediatrician recently flew to goa on one of those tickets by another airline, spicejet!
but like it happened in the early 90s, some of these new guys will definitely fold up.
also uncle, more flights are always welcome but our decaying airports just cannot take the increased traffic. delhi airport looks like a railway station these days!
isn't any one worried about dying???
i'm quite amazed that the public has so much faith in the safety of these fly-by-night carriers that they are willing to risk their lives for a cheap fare.
are you kidding? we travel on mumbai locals and drive on delhi roads, so why not fly for re 1? one day we all have to die so why worry :)
lulu,you'll be surprised.all these new carriers have spanking new aircrafts.boeing or airbus.the pilots have logged in tens of thousands of miles and they scruplously follow all the safety regulations.the odds for a crash are the same whether it is ia or jet or any of these.
now rums made an interesting observation about our local trains and roads.in fact scooterists in mumbai do not want the helmet to be made compulsory because they feel the danger lies more in the bad roads.and then i am reminded of an old acquaintance who never travelled by tram in kolkata after an astrologer predicted certain death in an accident.
a few days later when he was walking in park street,a child fell from the 4th floor of a building right on his shoulders,got down and ran away.the unfortunate man collapsed of shock and died.the moral is- que sera sera.whatever will be will be.
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