Airlines brainstorm for Plan B as fuel costs soar

Mumbai: No more lavish meal choices, no pampered check-ins and fewer options in flight timings. Call it Plan B or an effort by the airlines in India to cope with the crisis caused by soaring aircraft turbine fuel prices.
"Oil is changing everything. There are no easy answers. In the last six years, airlines improved fuel efficiency 19 per cent and reduced non-fuel unit costs 18 per cent. There is no fat left," said Giovanni Bisignani, director and CEO, International Air Transport Association.
That is why airlines are now looking at extracting cost efficiencies from a component that forms 37 per cent of operating costs, such as passenger amenities and parking and landing charges.
The other major cost components — fuel (40 per cent of costs) and employees (23 per cent) — provide little room for manoeuvre, say airlines.
"The entire focus is now on how to be optimally efficient, reduce waste and look at productivity within the system. We have to look at every cost item with a zero base to start from," said Sudheer Raghavan, chief operating officer, Jet Airways, the country's largest domestic private carrier.
To this end, Raghavan said the airline is looking at such options as kiosk check-ins. "We will also be taking a long, hard look at the choices we offer for passenger meals and the number of meals we uplift," Raghavan added, but declined to say how much the airline would save from these plans.
Airlines are also talking about collaborating for operational synergies.
04/06/08 Manisha Singhal/Business Standard

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Jun 2008