Budget carriers growing even amid economic gloom

Hyderabad: While full-service carriers find themselves trapped in economic turbulence, low-cost carriers in India appear to actually be benefiting from the gloom as they harvest a new segment of passengers from road and rail.
Top officials of Air India Express and SpiceJet agreed on the perception that the downturn in the aviation industry was even helping low-cost carriers (LCCs) to grow, while aviation experts said this was also because they had created a new segment of air travellers by wooing them from train travel.
"The LCCs in India did not exist five years ago. Now, five years later, they have expanded to corner as much as 50 per cent of the market share. The downturn as to some extent even helped them continue to grow," SpiceJet CEO Sanjay Agarwal said.
AI Express COO Capt P P Singh said the LCCs had created room for additional traffic which they attracted by converting rail and road travellers to airlines. The low fares attracted these passengers, a market which would continue to grow.
Both of them maintained that due to steps taken by them from the beginning to curtail costs, the two LCCs would break- even in the near future.
01/04/09 Press Trust of India

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Apr 2009, Low Cost General Apr 2009