IndiGO and Aditya

My last flight was on IndiGO from Hyderabad to Amdavad. We were on a vacation to Somnath and Dwarika etc.

Despite being a frequent flyer on IA, this time i chose to fly on IndiGO, for the simple reason was it an early   direct flight.

Well, the flight was clean and well maintained. The outer paint was new and still had the sheen of a new bird Air Bus A320. Staff were though not very courteous, a very common feature on many airlines these days, how ever, I was impressed by their decent uniform. The captain was warm in his welcome and informed us who were the on- board stewardess, and which stewardess could speak which language. It was rather strange that for a flight originating from Hyderabad, none of the air hostesses could speak telugu.

Well, the flight was conclusively pleasant and the vacation also memorable. Looking back, IndiGo caught my attention and is the subject matter of the blog because while Kingfisher has accumulated 13,000 CRORES loss and Jet not much behind at 7000 Crores, IndiGO actually made a PROFIT of 650 Crores.

How did this happen?

Read on...

1.            Well, the turn around time for this No frills, Budget baby is an amazing 22 min, as against almost an hour for other airlines like AI. Well, how do they do this, I guess, since the low cost carrier has lesser luggage, like food, other consumables to be loaded and unloaded every time. Also, I noticed, before the landing announcement was made,the pilot had requested us to cooperate with the Stewardess and "help them maintain their flight clean". While still air borne, a stewardess had come into the cabin with a trash bag, and requested us to put in our cutlery and other thrash into the bag. This way, the plane was almost cleaned even before it touched down!!

2.       Communication: It seems, IndiGO has a centralized communication system, wherein all operation controls such as weather, ground condition etc are provided to the pilot in advance. In case, should the air craft face a technical snitch and needs repair, the efficiency of the system is so good that, the team is on the site ready to attend to the complaint as soon as the flight is parked. This means there is no time waste after the air craft lands. The technical dispatch reliability is 99.97%  which is highest in the industry.

3.       Training: As against the industry average of 22% , IndiGO has about 38% pilots trained to land in bad weather conditions. This obviously adds to punctuality, less cancelled flights and chain of other things customers feel delighted about!

4.       Weight: It seems IndiGO uses the lightest chairs on its aircrafts. Weighing at just 12 Kgs, they are the lightest in India. Also, The air craft uses a special single coat paint, unlike other carriers, where by the weight of the air craft is lighter by 50 Kgs (almost one passenger's weight). Each day, the flight is thoroughly scrubbed and cleaned to eliminate the accumulation of dirt and dust. They surely would not like to spend expencive aviation fuel in carrying dirt and dust!

5.       There is only one class - Economy!

6.       The engines on these aircraft's, ( by the by, wikipedia says : IndiGo placed a firm order of 100 Airbus A320-200 aircraft during June 2005 , This is one of the largest orders of its kind in commercial aviation history! ) are V 2500 that consume 2% less fuel than the current ones, and IndiGO is the first flight to have these! Unlike other carries which have a mix of Boeing, Airbus and ATR, IndiGO has just one model fleet, thus tech ing and business model is maintained across areas.

7.        Employment: In addition, to all these a strict monitor is kept on the employment - ONLY 100 employees per aircraft, against 130 per air craft for other carriers.

8.      IndiGO mostly flies between A and B category towns and often flights are hopping flights. Its connectivity in North East is impressive!

Concluding:

Well, as i see it, it is paying attention to minutest details, over all and holistic management, and sticking to the core business idea in addition to well trained staff are the ingedients of this success story.

Your reviews on this post are valuable. Do write back!

Thanks for reading.