Keyser

anything is better than ai....but ai is all we have right now....

in all honesty, i don't think there is a need for another full service airline in india right now....uk will start flying international soon & that would be a good replacement for 9w....

HMPS

If your standards allow BA to be called a Luxury Airline then all bets are off ! Visit BA forums to hear more.
Relatively speaking both India and Indian Aviation are fairly new India as country is 70 odd years old, aviation is barely 65.
Coupled with various Governments it was laden with there was no scope of having a population that wanted and could patronize a luxury airline.

Air India USED to be a premium airline....but &*&^ happened !

Today India's Middle Class is exploding, people have money, are wanting to travel, do travel all over the world, both for business & leisure.

People like TATA can in collaboration ( they already partner with SQ for Vistara). So given the correct politics and govt. they can field a luxury airline.

Have my flak jacket on

oliver2002

Vistara is doing well because they have a uniform fleet and stick to a 2.5 class regional product. The Indian market can take such an offering and with the advantage of a greenfield setup they should be fine. What did 9W in was the purchase of Sahara introducing two parallel ops in the domestic market and a rapid haphhazard international expansion with too many aircraft types and changing strategy which exposed them badly to any changes in economic activity and/or competition.

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Well UK has just started buying 9Ws old 737s... it will be interesting to see what they do with them. 6 to start with maybe more later.

oliver2002

Thats what I was hinting at.... Vistara can very quickly follow 9W. Yesterday I had a twitter argument with some UK fanboi:

vj_rama

I believe OP answered their own question - There is very little motivation to develop a "luxury" international indian airline precisely because Indians have so many other options flying abroad!

Even on their worst days, flying ME3 is superior and often cheaper than AI. In fact, ME3 dominance in rerouting India-US traffic from Europe has led to the big boys from Europe improving their on board product over the last 10 years.

And at the end of all this, you have a very strong product offered by Turkish as a new global hub for travel.

So while it is somewhat comical that a country of 1.5 billion extremely smart and enterprenurial people can't seem to get the idea of running a proper international airline, the competition against them are fierce corporations with massive global hub airports. It's simply not worth it, I believe.

PiperAtGatesofDawn

ME3 aren't run as real competitive businesses so that's hardly the right example. EK, EY - suites, showers, bars etc. are displays of excess not sound financial management.

SQ is a better example of a luxury airline being run professionally and profitably.

vj_rama

Degree of government subsidy, business ethics, etc are irrelevant to discussion. Does the everyday consumer care how subsidized ME3 airlines are? Bottom line is there are way too many superior products with whom India would need to compete.

When denouncing ME3 as being a sham business, are you referring to degree of governement ownership, subsidy etc? SQ is also majority owned by the government and hence benefits from large tax breaks etc. In fact most major airlines in the world have a significant stake in them by corresponding governements.

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Not denouncing anyone... why would I care how they are financed. All I'm saying is that there isn't a similar establishment in India signing unlimited amounts of money to any airline.

enox5

ME3 are used as tools by the governments to promote their countries. In this respect, these airlines have been very successful

Why can't India do the same thing?

vishalgupta22

Indian government does put a lot of tax INR into AI but that doesn't help and will never help coz the employees clearly know that their comp is unrelated to performance and the AI isn't empowered to demote or fire anyone for anything (except some major cause). There is simply no reason for employees to make AI any better. If that was not enough the fact that govt officials and bureaucrats can get away after abusing or beating the AI staff provides the last nail in the coffin.

vj_rama

Agree 100%

In my opinion, there is no other country in the world with a more luxurious 5 star hotel experience than India. Indian hospitality is something unique and would be great to see it translated into the airline industry. I understand there are differences in operating a business in those industries, but the basic tenets of treating customers like house guests and charming/smiling/helpful employees seem to be natural for our culture!

Air India is a hot mess both in operation and reputation and one can only point to government ownership as the cause. While some government owned airlines thrive (whether fair or not), I don't think this can work in India primarily due to the immense amount of corruption at the highest levels.

A fabulous Indian airline is going to require the ingenuity and innovation of private enterprise. But another major hurdle is geography. The subcontinent is not a natural global airline hub at this point. Asia-Europe and Asia/USA doesnt naturally fit into a stopover in India. You need to have a broad connection base like ME3 to take advantage of vast more passengers. If india had gotten their act together in the 80's and 90's, they maybe could have beaten the middle east at this game and become a major global hub between europe, asia and US. Although, looking at the map, it just doesn't seem like a geographically logical hub for the major passenger movements on the planet.