oppn parties Air India Tries To Address The Problem Of Empty Seats

News Snippets

  • After AIMIM legislator Akbaruddin Owaisi was named pro-tem speaker in Telangana, BJP MLAs skipped the oath-taking event. They accused Owaisi of being anti-Hindu
  • Rahul Gandhi disagrees with Ashok Gehlot, says not BJP's polarization but communication gap was the main reason for the party's defeat in rajasthan
  • Bombay HC disagrees with Enforcement Directorate, says house arrest is part of detention as personal liberty is curtailed
  • With no decision yet, the suspense over BJP's chief ministers for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh continues, decision likely on Sunday
  • Mayawati's BSP has suspended outspoken party MP Danish Ali who was targeted by BJP's Ramesh Bidhuri and was also strongly defending Mohua Moitra
  • Mamata Banerjee seeks appointment with PM Modi over dues to Bengal, likely to meet him between December 18 and 20
  • New counting machines had to be requisitioned as the ones in operation broke down while counting cash seized from the properties of Congress MXP and brewery owner Dhiraj Sahu. The amount seized is likely to cross Rs 300cr, the biggest such haul ever
  • India take on South Africa in the first T20 today. Match starts 7.30pm IST
  • The elections to the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) will be held on December 21
  • 2nd Women's T20 versus England: Indian batters cut a sorry figure, all out for 80 to hand England vicxtory by 4 wickets and lose the series
  • Junior World Cup hockey: India thrash Canada 10-1, enter quarterfinals
  • Delhi HC has ruled that a woman can be the 'karta' of HUF as per existing law
  • Supreme Court says that pre-trial detention of the accused in the Delhi liquor excise case cannot be 'so long', grants bail to Benoy babu, reginal manager of Pernod Ricard, a liquor manufacturing company
  • Calcutta HC rules that a married women is also a part of her father's family
  • Mohua Moitra says she has been 'hanged by kangaroo court'
BJP springs a surprise, tribal leader Vishnu Deo Sai is the new chief minister of Chhattisgarh
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Air India Tries To Address The Problem Of Empty Seats

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2019-05-13 11:56:12

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
While travelling to Kolkata from Dibrugarh in Assam on a morning flight of Air India a few days back, one was surprised to see more than a dozen vacant seats on a sector that is generally overbooked, more so when flights had been cancelled for two days due to Cyclone Fani. Empty seats are a total loss to any airline and all efforts must be made to fill up the planes, especially in sectors where there is regular traffic.

Hence, one was pleasantly surprised when Air India announced recently that it would offer huge discounts (up to 40%) on unsold seats up to 3 hours from the scheduled departure of the flight. This means that the airline has taken stock of the situation and is trying to find a remedy for it. Contrary to general perception, this decision of the airline shows that there are some in the upper management who are alive to the situation and are trying to do their best to cut losses.

Consider the above situation. The quoted price of a ticket on that day was about Rs 8000. It would have deterred a few from travelling. It meant that 12 or more seats were left unsold on the flight. Now, if Air India offered the same seats at 40% discount three hours from departure, one is sure that at Rs 4800 (the price that is normally prevalent in the sector even a month in advance), more than 10 seats would have been sold. It would have meant that Air India would have earned nearly Rs 50000 more on that particular flight.

The decision will come as a boon for passengers who have to travel in an emergency. They can now hope to get tickets at a rate similar to one if they had planned the journey one month in advance. This will also mean that the badly bleeding airline will also cut down its losses and fill up its planes. Air India can still turn around if it trims its bloated workforce, streamlines its operations and pays attention to such ostensibly 'small' things which add up to huge losses.