Edition 35
Early this week, Air India Express launched Hand Baggage only fares and named it “Xpresslite”. Ironic as it may seem, the first brush of hand bag only fares was by AirAsia India in 2014, even before its first flight. AirAsia India is AIX Connect today and awaiting a full merger with Air India Express.
Almost every carrier in India in the recent past has flirted with the “lite” model in one way or another. For IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir it was with baggage and for Vistara it meant “without meals”. In the case of Jet Airways, the whole low cost arm was named Jetlite!
A like to like comparison with other low cost carriers give a feeling that others have failed after trying. One of the reasons was that the airline cannot charge an exorbitant fare if a passenger turns up with baggage at the airport, unlike the western world. A new fare class means new complications in revenue management. While the airline did not give out the details, a random search showed that the fare difference between hand baggage-only fares and fares which allow check-in baggage is only ₹368, while there are some instances where the airline is giving a return fare discount which makes the hand baggage-only fares more expensive!
The fares are available only on the Air India Express website. In a country where direct booking has still not caught up and airlines who traditionally believed only in “own brand website” had to tap the travel agents, making the fare even more difficult to sell. These are things which were seemingly known but then why did the airline go ahead with the fares? The answer to this is the same as why airlines find India attractive while fully knowing that it is a cut throat market which has seen failures.
The counter argument I always keep making especially at a time when somebody else has made that mistake and failed is “Does one need to try everything or reinvent the wheel?” Can one not learn from others’ mistakes or is it another marketing gimmick? The answer will be known on how many days the product lasts and if it does for a longer period, how long will it take for the competition to restart the product?
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