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Indians love to fly
Till the end of November this year, almost 40 million Indians took to the skies in 2009. And the numbers are growing.They are very discerning, too. They like the 'five-star' fare dished out by Kingfisher Airlines, appreciate Jet Airways and make no bones about expressing displeasure at what they perceive to be shoddy service standards at the public sector Air India.
Till the end of November this year, almost 40 million Indians took to the skies in 2009. And the numbers are growing.
They are very discerning, too. They like the 'five-star' fare dished out by Kingfisher Airlines, appreciate Jet Airways and make no bones about expressing displeasure at what they perceive to be shoddy service standards at the public sector Air India.
They are also highly value-conscious, as is evident from the 70 per cent market share enjoyed by the five low-cost carriers (LCCs).
"We are a nation of people who are, perhaps, easy to please. Overall, a satisfaction index of 765 out of 1,000 is not a mean score by any standard.
But we are also a diverse lot. And, therefore, it comes as no surprise that the satisfaction ratings vary significantly across cities," says Raghu Roy, managing director, MaRS Monitoring & Research Pvt Limited, our knowledge partner for this survey.
The survey indicates that the distinction between full-service airlines and their low-cost rivals is fast getting blurred. While Kingfisher and Jet Airways are the two top-ranked airlines overall on all parameters, their scores are not overwhelmingly superior to those of the LCCs, and they are not ahead of the pack in all the cities and towns surveyed.
In Bangalore, passengers actually rated Jet Lite, Jet Airways' low-cost sibling, over Kingfisher and Jet. In New Delhi and Chennai, too, an LCC, SpiceJet, emerges as the most preferred airline, once again underlining the fact that Indians are very value-conscious lot.
One caveat will be in order here. All the passengers who had flown Paramount rated it the best airline, but since the pool of such flyers was very small (only 42 of the 1,330 passengers we surveyed had flown the airline), we decided to keep it out of the overall rankings.
(In a value-conscious market like India, it takes more than swanky lounges, new planes and smart air-hostesses to impress flyers, but they help, an HT-MaRS study finds out.)
