Budget airlines add frills to woo fliers

Budget airlines are now introducing new flight services and schemes to either expand the aviation pie or wean away passengers from other players.
Almost all the no-frills airlines, except IndiGo, are going the whole hog to woo fliers with service offerings that are blurring the line between them and full service carriers such as Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines, Air India (domestic) and Paramount Airways.
The second largest player in this segment, SpiceJet Ltd, which had started offering tea and coffee about a month ago, is now serving breakfast onboard its aircraft. The airline has also done away with the charge of Rs 500 on unaccompanied child and extra baggage fee for overseas travellers that have connecting international flight within 24 hours.
Its smaller rival GoAir is trying to get hold of the last customer by offering a scheme whereby fliers get one ticket free on buying five tickets. The airline is planning to come with a cancellation programme, which will offer free tickets for flight cancellations between July 2008 and February 15, 2009. The free ticket will be over and above the refund on the ticket of the cancelled flight.
The trend of frills on budget airlines was started by Kingfisher last year, when it started offering snacks to its Kingfisher Red fliers. Ankur Bhatia, managing director of Amadeus, said new service offerings help get the last passenger on board.
Samyukth Sreedharan, chief commercial officer of SpiceJet, said in the current market, such services are helping his airline eat into full service carriers' pie and expand its share. He said SpiceJet flew 8% more passengers in February this year compared with the same month last year. Even in March, its year-on-year passenger numbers grew by 5%.

DNA