enjoystravel

There seems to be a strong need to discuss the creation of a new forum for "Airlines from India" or "Other Airlines from India". Currently these discussions happen in the "Other Asian Carriers" forum and such diverse forums as Star, Oneworld, Skyteam, United, Lufthansa, Northwest, etc.

The proposal for this forum is not a new idea or even my idea. I'm simply proposing it here based on response to feedback on another thread - Suggestion: Proposal For a 9W (Jet Airways (India)) Forum in the TalkBoard Topics forum. I was introduced to this idea through a post by GUWonder in the above thread.

A case may be made for a similar forum for "Airlines from Mainland China" but I'll leave that task to someone else.

The interest in this new forum is guaranteed to be high - the count of posts and views for threads on Indian carriers is very high. As these threads are dispersed, there does not seem to be an easy way to gather statistics but my preliminary counts are compelling. I'll try to share my stats if I can clean them up within a few weeks.

This forum would include discussions on frequent flyer programs, networks and operations of:
- Air India (AI) Flying Returns (which now has merged with Indian Airlines IC)
- Jet Airways (9W) JetPrivileges (which now has merged with Air Sahara/JetLite's Cosmos)
- Kingfisher (IT) (which seems to be headed towards a common program with Air Deccan)
- Paramount Airways and other smaller carriers from India.

The FF programs of these carriers are among the fastest growing in the world and there is a large potential expansion of FT by drawing members of these programs to a focused forum. Most of major carriers in the world expect China and India to be their fastest growing markets and it is natural to see a lot of discussion about alternative programs from carriers in India and China.

AI and IC are likely to join Star Alliance within a few months. This new combine entity has one of the largest plane orders on books for B777, 787, 737s and for A320s as well. Soon AI will be the largest Non-stop service operator between US and India and is already the largest carrier of traffic between US (world's largest market) and India (one of the worlds fastest growing market).

Jet Airways is the first Asian carrier to establish a hub in Europe (Brussels). They recently started long-haul service to US from India via Europe and are operating at 90%+ load factors based on press reports. They expect to connect 5 to 7 North American cities to India and expect rapid growth in US based FF members.

Kingfisher co-operates with NW and you can get status miles on NW by flying on IT. They have 380s on order and are one of the largest carriers in Asia and India with the recent investment in Air Deccan (a low cost carrier in India). Through Air Deccan, they'll get rights to fly to US in 2008.

I believe a focused forum will make FT more usable to many of the increasingly sophisticated travelers to and from the Indian subcontinent and allow FT to be more relevant to the future of FFers.

Some of the arguments against starting a separate forum that I can think of are :
- This will be the first country or region specific forum that addresses a geographic region smaller than a continent
- There may be a clamor for many more such country specific forums (though India and China are unique in scale)
- Some members prefer airline specific forums
- New post count in individual forums is not currently high (posts are spread throughout)
- Travel may be domestic and not of interest here (again factually not true
- While pax numbers and industry growth may be there, posts on FT do not match the growth. I do not buy into this especially going forward, but want to leave this argument for members to debate.
- Better to have a forum based on the national flag carrier (Air India) and have other posts go to that.

I look forward to a healthy debate. I noticed that several TalkBoard members mentioned in the above quoted thread that they'd support a broader forum for carriers from India. I hope this gets the needed support.

Savage25

1 vote from me. I count 57 threads that I have posted on in the "Other Asian, Australian and South Pacific Frequent Flyer Programs" and 47 of those threads are related to airlines of India.

SuperFlyBoy

You can see my opinion in my original thread....but keep in mind that without organization, posts are just too hard to find, especially with this 3 letter word limitation on FT, so as I stated in the other thread, with regard to "Airlines of India":

"Provided there are sub-forums that the postings pertaining to the individual airlines can be organized properly!!"

USA_flyer

^FWIW, seems like a good idea to me.

dbuckho

Planning my November trip to India which includes 5 internal India flights. It has not been easy to find all the information I wanted - so count another yes vote here.

Delhi Flyer

A big ^ for this idea!

AJLondon

Agreed. Another ^ to this idea from me.

aktchi

I agree most enthusiastically!^

Jenbel

ok this was a question posted on the private forum, so I'm going to steal it with apologies to the original poster for doing so (sometimes our privacy rules are annoying when we can't acknowledge someone else's idea! )

What would make an 'Airlines of India' forum better than the current 'Other' forum? Both are generic regional forums... why is one an improvement on the other?

SuperFlyBoy

Well, if it were possible to create sub-forums, then fine with either of the above....if not, then I would segregate/create the airlines that require segregation, such as the one (Jet Airways) that I would like to have a separate for forum for - such as the Finnair one!

AJLondon

generic regional both might be, but one is certainly more specific than the other.

IMHO the "other" forum, in its curent form, seems to be dominated by questions on Indian carriers, and the Indian domestic flying experience is rather different from that in other parts of Asia.

So separating this chunk out would certainly ease things not only for posters wanting advice/discussion on Indian carriers but furthermore it would also allow other Asian (but not Indian) carriers a chance to get a fair go in the existing forum without being dominated by Indian associated threads.

In that sense I think this would be an improvement over the status quo.

gmailflyer

I see a rapid increase in posts and interest on airlines from India and China. It seems logical to have separate forums for that. Having sub-forums with specific airlines also makes a lot of sense.

AJLondon

Bump! Any feedback from TB about this?

gmailflyer

From what little I have seen, TB feedback seems to be sporadic and in response to a controversy.

Look at the Other Asian ... forum, I see a strong and growing interest in post on all topics related to Indian carriers. There are many on Air India and Jet Airways but also a lot on IT (Kingfisher), I7 (Paramount), etc. One thread on Air India joinig Star alliance in the Star forum goes 4 pages long and has thousands of views.

I hope that TB members are tracking those other areas and then act consistently with Asian carrier as they have done with European carrier. There, if you're looking for a controversy !

yosithezet

I have traveled to India some 19 times in the past 2 years or so. The current "Other Asian" forum has served me well enough. That said, if there was a specific Indian Airlines forum I would likely have that in my RSS feeds. I do not support subforums for the various airlines as I don't think that the traffic warrants it at the moment. In the future that may be necessary but I don't think it is necessary at the moment.