Number 1 or 2 or whatever does not make any difference to passengers or to yields, if the product remains mired in the perception that it is unreliable. Domestic aviation is a pure commodity now, especially in India, where branding matters to very few.

WOW is all fine said and done and dreamt about, but fact remains, DN will need to sort out issues which have nothing to do with competition on bureaucracy. Their cabin crew uniform, for one - can you imagine what things would be like if ever there was an emergency?

In addition, this business of selling products on board at prices more than MRP as well as not providing seat-pre-assignment, are inhouse deficiencies.

But most of all, DN need to get honest about refunds and delays.

 

 

Part 2 of the report:

Reposting it:

Air Deccan to start campaign on Sep 19 to reach Number one slot

Bangalore, Sep 16 (UNI)

India’s first low cost carrier, Air Deccan will trigger a massive campaign from September 19 to dislodge Jet Airways from the number one slot.

Announcing the campaign named ’WOW’’, Air Deccan Managing Director Capt G R Gopinath and Chief Operating Officer Warwick Brady told newsmen here that from September 19 the airline would also offer a free ticket to its passengers if the flight is delayed beyond three hours, except in cases where delay is caused by fog. For a cancelled flight, Air deccan would put its passengers on the next flight, on another airline, subject to availability.

With a fleet of 37 aircraft, including 12 Airbus A 320s, Air Deccan currently enjoy a market share of 21.2 per cent being the second behind Jet Airways which had a clear ten per cent lead.

Growing at 0.5 per cent rate a month, Air Deccan aimed to capture the slot of being the best carrier with customer satisfaction by January next year

Capt Gopinath said ‘‘its inevitability and reality’’ that we will emerge number one carrier in the country, despite the hurdles posed by competition and bureaucracy.

Mr Brady said by the end of the current fiscal, the airliner would have 45 aircraft and by fiscal 2008 the number would go up to 57. Capt Gopinath said in October three Airbus aircraft and two ATRs would join the fleet.

                                                       ***

PART 2

 

Capt Gopinath remarked ‘‘before we become number one, we will become the best airliner with ontime performance.

The low cost carrier had added 20 new airports in its national map so far this year and by the end of the current fiscal the total flights per day would touch 310 from the present 270, Mr Brady said. The new destinations that would unfurl over the next couple of months include Bellary, Kullu, Pathankot, Jamshedpur and Kutch. By the end of current fiscal year the airliner would have carried seven million passengers from two million passengers last year.

Mr Brady said that Air Deccan had recently signed up with Lufthansa for component support. Simiarly it had also signed up a support package with Airbus for three million dollars and ATR for two million dollars. This would ensure 45 engineers of both the aviation majors to be housed in Air Deccan bases to provide in house training to technical staff. Effort also would be made to have one A320 aircraft and three ATRs as spare aircraft to reduce or minimise cancellations. Mr Brady said.

Both Mr Brady and Capt Gopinath highlighted the bureaucratic bottlenecks and predatory pricing indulged by the competition to kill the low cost airliner. Capt Gopinath said ‘‘we are not going to give up’’. He lamented that the airliner was still to get parking bays in New Delhi, even though a relatively later comer, SpiceJet had been given five bays in New Delhi.

 Stating that cartalisation and monopoly was playing havoc on the economy, Capt Gopinath wanted setting up of multiple airports in the country.

Believe me. AD needs to do a lot more to catch up with 9W.

Wishfull thinking.

Whats are their Spares status.Back up Aircraft.

regds

MEL

Well C,mon guys we cant compare apples with oranges. DN do can compete with 9W in certain things like on time plane dep, and other operational aspects but when it comes to
pax service we all know it those blue skirt chics with artificial hindi accent and a proper english accent are much better than lite yellow shirt chicks selling coffee, tea in the whole galley.

DN can really be the flag bearer of Indian aviation industry in terms of Indian pax handled if they could streamline certain things yes they are stressing on ontime dep which is good. But then they should introduce seat allocation too. Because running like dogs for ur fav seat also is a hassle plus if they could start selling proper meals i am sure they can mint more money > Atleast they will have my vote. Because the last thing i want is to go hungry on a 2 hr flight... Though too common abroad i guess i hav really got spoilt by the sahara,s pampering

But yes it will be great to see them on the top spot and indeed they are working hard for it.

-- Edited by vabby at 09:18, 2006-09-17

DN is no.2 in terms of traffic carried on the common routes where it operates with the other carriers. However if taken on overall domestic traffic, then IC is still #2.

So this #2 business is a ingenious PR exercise. I have no doubt that they have the potential to be the #1 in terms of traffic. But that is still in the future.

PS: My first post here!!

http://www.ndtvprofit.com/homepage/storybusinessnew.asp?id=33528&template=&cache=9/17/2006%2010:15:08%20AM
Air Deccan to launch Yellow campaign
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nupur Basu

Sunday, September 17, 2006 (Bangalore):

Air Deccan, India's first low cost airline which has grown to operating 265 flights a day and ferrying 6.6 million passengers, has now come up with an ambitious roadmap. It wants to become the country's best carrier in all respects by March 2007.

In this regard, the airline is launching a "No Rest Till We Are The Best" campaign.

The message will be made loud and clear through a yellow T-shirt campaign by its employees right down from the COO to the Air Deccan staff at airports. The campaign begins from September 19.

"The Yellow campaign is a huge branding campaign and a plan to communicate to all our passengers and customers that we are a reliable airline. We are on time, we offer great fares and you should fly with us," said Warwick Brady, COO, Air Deccan.

Becoming the best

Air Deccan recently celebrated its third anniversary and the COO who shifted from Ryan Air to come onboard Air Deccan completed one year this week in office.

In this period, Air Deccan has become India's second largest scheduled airlines after Jet Airways, beating the national carrier Indian Airlines.

"Seventeen aeroplanes to 37 aeroplanes in one year, to go from 7 per cent market share to 22 per cent market share in one year. We have had huge challenges and given the infrastructure constraints, the regulatory environment and the bureaucratic nature of all of our suppliers, it has been tough," added Brady.

Air Deccan has taken a long hard look at one of its major pitfalls, which has been the issue of punctuality and says it has built a roadmap ahead, which will make Air Deccan the most punctual airline by March 2007 in this country.

To get there, obviously, the company will really have to walk the talk.

 

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1053566

Air Deccan goes for an image overhaul

Praveena Sharma
Sunday, September 17, 2006  22:05 IST

 

With better services, new colours and an attitudinal shift, the pioneer plans to unseat Jet.

BANGALORE: When the problem is understood, can the solution be far behind?

After a three-year flight replete with all manner of snafus, to be charitable to the pioneer, not all of it was of its own doing — Air Deccan has become the No 2 airline in the country with a 21.2% market share in June.

Now, says managing director GR Gopinath, the flight to the pole position has begun.

And its flight path to it is higher service standards and a complete makeover of image.

It goes way beyond just switching the colour of tee-shirts worn by employees from blue to yellow.

The airline is now looking at improving its on-time performance and passenger service; reduce number of cancellations and customer complaints even as it maintains the lowest fares in the market.

Gopinath says surging ahead of Jet is inevitable with the kind of operation expansion his airline has planned over the next few years.

“Overtaking Jet is inevitable. It is a reality, and we won’t even have to work for it. But before we become the No 1, we want to become the best.”

Being the best, however, may take tremendous effort on the part of Deccan; not just in terms of financial investment but also in terms of attitudinal shift.

Nonetheless, the airline has already kicked off the exercise.

Over the last nine months, the airline has brought down its flight cancellations to less than half from 597 in January to 234 in August. It has also improved on-time performance during the same period from 58.61% within 15 minutes and 87.11% in an hour to 76.40% and 98.33% respectively.

Last three months have seen its on-time within 15 minutes range between 76% and 79% and within an hour, it is hovering at around 98%. The no-frills airline has also pruned the percentage of complaints per 1000 passenger from 13.6% (on 3.19 lakh passengers) in January to 6.82% (on 4.21 lakh passengers) in August.

Such performances are giving it the confidence to commit to passengers on service standards. It is kicking off a month-long WOW campaign beginning September 19 under which, if an Air Deccan flight is delayed over three hours flyers would unconditionally be getting a free ticket (except in cases of delay due to fog), and in case of cancellation, he would be put on another flight, subject to availability.

And as it embarks on the campaign, the airline has entered into Rs 460 crore ($10 million) agreement with Lufthansa for component and maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) support and another Rs 230 crore ($5 million) agreement with aerospace companies — Airbus ($3 million) and ATRs ($2million) — for engineering support.

“One of the reasons for high cancellations was inadequate engineering support and ready availability of components. Now with the agreement with Lufthansa, we will have on-site stock of spare-parts at all our bases. Also, 35 Airbus and ATR engineers will train our technicians and engineers. This will improve our operational efficiency considerably,” says Air Deccan CEO Warwick Brady.

The airline’s performance had also suffered because it had no hangar. Now, it is taking care of that too. By December, it will be completing the construction of the hangar at Chennai airport. But more than anything else, analysts say it is the volumes that will give Air Deccan a natural advantage over others.

Over the past one year, the number of passengers flown by the airline has swelled 230% from 2 million in September, 2005, to the current 6.6 million. By the end of this year, it is expecting to touch 7 million, a magical figure the airline had been waiting for long. “Once we reach it, we will have good control over yields,” quips Brady. And once yields are in its control, the game would be as good as won.

 

www.uninews.com

Air Deccan to fly to Tirupati, Vizag, Mumbai, Jaipur from B’lore

Bangalore, Sep 19 (UNI)

Low cost flier Air Deccan today announced the launch of new daily flights to the temple towns of Madurai and Tirupati from Bangalore from October 30.

The flights would be serviced by a 48-seater ATR 42-500 aircraft, Air Deccan said in a release here.

According to the schedule announced, flight DN407 would leave Bangalore at 1055 hrs and reach Tirupati at 1145 hrs. It would reach Vishakapatnam from Tirupati at 1340 hrs. In the return journey, flight DN408 would leave Vishakapatnam at 1355 hrs, reach Tirupati at 1550 hrs and Bangalore at 1640 hrs.

The daily Bangalore-Madurai flight DN105 would leave Bangalore at 1500 hrs and reach its destination at 1630 hrs. In the return journey, flight DN106 would leave Madurai at 1645 hrs and reach here at 1815 hrs.

Air Deccan also announced the launch of new flights to Jaipur via Mumbai to be serviced by an Airbus A320.

The five-day flight DN606 would leave Bangalore at 1015 hrs, reach Mumbai at 1145 hrs and depart for Jaipur at 1220 hrs. It would reach Jaipur at 1355 hrs. In the return journey, flight DN605 would leave Jaipur at 1425 hrs, reach Mumbai at 1600 hrs, depart Mumbai at 1640 hrs and reach Bangalore at 1810 hrs.

The schedules were subject to approval by relevant Government authorities, the release said.

Commenting on the new flights to Madurai and Tirupati, Air Deccan Managing Director G R Gopinath said the airliner already had flights to Madurai from Chennai and two flights to Tirupati from Hyderabad. The new flights to these cities would provide the much-needed connectivity at affordable fares and quick speed to pilgrims.

Capt Gopinath looks a very Down to Earth Kind of person.Anyone know if its true.

regds

MEL