Originally Posted by enjoystravel

I strongly recommend Kingfisher airlines on routes they serve in India. They have ocassional problems with ontime arrival (a lot of it airport infrastructure related but their limited network and small fleet causes impact). I am not sure what the ontime rankings are per DGCA reports.

They now have a critical mass of flts on trunk routes and are expanding steadily. Their economy product is probably the best in India. Their airport experience is among the best in India for economy passengers.

I have personally decided to switch my business to Kingfisher. I used to fly Club Premier in Jet Airways and now prefer Kingfisher for the value (Jet Club seat is still more comfortable and a superior physical product).

Kingfisher is trying to emulate the superior aspects of Jetblue airways. It is not copying the light weight service aspects of SouthWest or the ultra cheap ways of Ryan. It is low fare and not low service.

Background:

I have extensive experience flying in India though I'm based in the US. I usually fly for business reasons in India and reliability + service are recommending factors. I have generally gone with Jet Airways unless IA or S2 offer better schedules on specific routes.

One of my Indian relatives flew on Kingfisher the first week they started operations and kept recommending them strongly. My travel desk in India however kept advising me against flying Kingfisher because of their limited route network and small fleet.

Recently I decided to fly them on a personal segment while traveling with some family members. I was "wow"ed by the experience. The brand impacts you the moment you arrive in the airport. There are staff hired by Kingfisher who wait for you in uniform at the departure terminal and the moment they see Kingfisher passengers struggling with luggage bring luggage carts and help you all the way through check-in. Similarly, at your arriving airport, Kingfisher hired staff will look out and help pax with luggage all the way to their rental cars or other transport. They absolutely refuse any tips. Similar to Skycap service but done with a lot more service touch for free.

The checkin staff were extremely friendly and helpful. I have flown several times on Jet Airways where the load would be 20% in business class but your next seat will stupidly be assigned to another passenger. In Economy Jet Airways is even worse in terms of not assigning empty seats intelligently. On Kingfisher, I found that they had kept most middle seats empty when loads were light. My family of 4 on a segment was assigned Window/Aisle in a single row with middle seats blocked.

The food was decent. Comparable to the others - in general Jet, Sahara and Kingfisher all seem to offer reasonable food choices. Compared to US, Europe short haul flts the food on Indian carriers is vastly superior.

The inflight magazine was thick, with excessive emphasis on fashions and cosmetics and little light on travel/adventure. Vijay Mallya takes "lifestyle" to be in a certain narrow mold of a spirits distributor.

Given the lower fares and lighter loads, I do worry about Kingfisher being viable in the long term. They are definitely trying to emulate the Jetblue model and not the Air Deccan's Ryan Air model.