Deccan to fly red & white all the way

Mumbai: Air Deccan, the country’s first and the largest low-cost carrier, will soon lose its tag as a common man’s airline. Next month, UB Group, which acquired a 26% stake in the Bangalore-based airline in June, will push through a new identity and improved service standards.
The plan is to improve the flying experience and in turn command a higher price, thereby pulling the airline out of the red. UB Group chairman Vijay Mallya told ET, “Air Deccan will have a ‘premium’ look and feel, so that it changes into the best product in the low-cost airline space.”
The most visible change will be in the livery. Instead of its current blue and white brand colours with two yellow hands in its logo, the Air Deccan fleet will be painted in the bright red and white Kingfisher colours, down to the blue kingfisher on the tail. The Kingfisher and Air Deccan fleet will thus have an exactly identical livery, except for the name, insiders said.
But Mr Mallya has stopped short of entirely junking the Air Deccan brand. Instead, he has clipped it to a more stylised ‘Deccan’. Two separate market research studies showed that the brand enjoyed instant recall across the country, particularly in tier-2 towns. But it also signalled that the brand needed urgent image uplift.
04/09/07 Cuckoo Paul/Economic Times

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Categories: Air Deccan Sep 2007, Kingfisher Sep 2007