I read on a news story yesterday that mainstream airlines are fighting back and gaining back the market share that they lost to budget airlines in the last few years. It made me reflect on why I never managed to take a budget airline in my few journeys in the last year or two – a period when new airlines have been launched and prices have been slashed.
Flight cancellations. It is primarily an issue with Air Deccan more than any other airlines. I can tolerate delays for a few hours, since I usually don’t travel on business and never in a hurry. But what I definitely can’t afford is cancellations. You are left in the middle of nowhere and the options you will be left with are to fly paying the full price or cancel your trip – terrible options really. Of course, they are nice enough to return entire money, but that’s not much help.
Refund policy when you cancel your ticket. This is a problem with Kingfisher and Spice Jet. I usually book my tickets 3 to 4 weeks in advance. That means there is a good chance that my travel plans can change. If I want to cancel my ticket, I need my money back, in hard cash – the same way I paid them. I don’t mind some cancellation charges, since airlines do need to recover their operating expenses, travel agent’s fees, etc. So before I book my ticket, I always look at the cancellation rules. Both Kingfisher and Spice Jet have cancellation rules that I don’t like much. Kingfisher gives you credits which you can use later, but no cash refunds. I am not a very frequent flyer and I don’t like these credits; I need my money back. Spice Jet does not return your money at all, you can just kiss good bye to it! These are the rules that I read when I tried booking them online. The mainstream airlines are much friendlier in cancellation – you only pay some cancellation charges and get back rest of the money.
Can’t book an itinerary spread across multiple flights. I needed to fly from Bangalore to Guwahati a few months back. There are no direct flights and it is a one hop journey, stopping at Kolkata. Air Deccan would have saved me Rs.500 if I took their flight to Kolkata. But they don’t take the responsibility of putting me on the connecting flight. Would they get delayed or cancelled, which often happens with them, it is my problem and not theirs. With a mainstream airline, you can make a single booking from starting point to end point. And if you can’t catch the connecting flight, they take the responsibility of putting you on the next available flight.
The money saved is not much. As I said before, I book my flight 3 to 4 weeks in advance. Unless you get a real cheap deal like Air Deccan’s Rs.500 ticket, the price difference is just a few hundred rupees(try it yourself). For example, what would cost Rs.4500 on a big airline might cost you Rs.4200 on a budget airline. I don’t think it is really worth it, especially keeping the first three reasons in mind. A budget airline may be a good option if I have to fly tomorrow, but such an occasion has never come to me. A budget airline may save a lot of money if you are taking a short haul flight(like Bangalore to Chennai), but I usually travel by bus or train for short distances. So I never really got a chance to save substantially by opting for budget, and I never did fly a budget airline, yet!
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The main reason I keep flying on Air Deccan is that they don’t charge extra for foreign nationals. (I don’t think Spice does either.) If Jet were at all close in price, I’d be there in a flash.
As an example, Air Deccan has a return flight between B’lore and Delhi for next month costing 9448 INR. Jet gives me 10505 INR (not bad), but that changes to $484 (22275 INR) once I note that I’m a foreign national. That’s BS.
There are some plans to get rid of separate pricing policy and I hope that happens soon. I know especially how frustrating it is for foreign nationals at Taj. And I think Rs.22000 is really really steep.