Anurag Jain's Blog on Bangalore Events, Travel, IIM Bangalore, IIM, IIMB, Management

Friday, January 27, 2006

Posted 7:40 AM by Anurag

Of Flight Disruptions.

As I work with an airline, I know there is a lot of hullabaloo whenever a flight canceled. You yourself as a customer/passenger would know the same too. Of course, the commotion created by upset passengers is for valid reasons. But what they should also understand is the inability of airline sometime to do anything about the situation. Always, yes - always, inability to operate a scheduled flight is out of compulsion and not by choice. No airline wants to lose money. And certainly, no airline wants customer wrath. Yes, there are issues which can be tackled by airlines and improve the overall adherence-to-schedule situation, but otherwise most of these flight delays/cancelations situations are out of control.

And not that it doesn't happen anywhere else. Last Saturday, my parents' domestic flight in US got canceled. They were to travel from Raleigh to Chicago and then catch a non-stop flight to New Delhi. However, due to bad weather, the domestic Raleigh to Chicago flight was canceled. They wasted four hours at airport before being told of the cancelation. That upset their whole itinerary. They were accomodated in the next day's flights but it wouldn't be a non-stop flight this time around. They would go Chicago-London and then be flown London-New Delhi, which would mean a lot of extra hours. By the next day, however, finally they were accomodated in the non-stop flight itself.

Admittedly, in any business, somebody else's dismal performance can only serve as a solace, and not as benchmark. And certainly not as an excuse. However, the point is that sometimes both sides in the business have to be a little bit more realistic and accommodating, esp when a new business model is being tried out, or an existing/proven business model is being tested in a new geography.

1 comments

Comments:

Sorry, but this is such bull. AirDeccan in particular offers lackadaisical service. There are always in the news for all the wrong reasons, either a close mid-air collision has been averted, or the flights have been delayed, or cancelled without any reason, or the flight nearly skidded off the runaway and so on. They advertise that their prices are the lowest anytime, and the fact of the matter is that IA and Jet prices are almost always lower. I have personally done research on prices of flights of AirDeccan versus others. If this was the US I could have sued them for making false claims. Bah.

# posted by

Unknown : March 29, 2006 12:04 PM