I've got a blog at mymysore72.blogspot.com where I wrote about aviation in general and diversified it into a forum for me to write about my travels as well. A blogger, Mr. GV Krishnan, based in Mysore, India egged me on to write aviation specific blogs that would highlight some of the deficiencies in Indian Aviation and what needs to be done to improve things.
It is common knowledge for anyone flying in the Indian skies as a passenger that it is a hassle to fly. There are lots of Airlines these days connecting just about everywhere one would want to go and that's not the problem. Actually, that's the good thing. The bad part of the entire rapid expansion is that the much needed infrastructure has not caught on and developments in this area is woefully slow.
The job situation in Aviation is good, pilots, engineers, cabin crew, ground support staff ET AL never had it so good. However, the Airlines are not doing so well. In their mad dash to be one up over the next operator, they are all painting RED. That's never good for a business that is capital intensive and these days over competitive. Us aviation chaps know that this field is a big hole, a bottomless pit where one pours in the money and the pit never fills up. Its a common joke to say that if one wants to be a millionaire in aviation, one should start with many millions!!
Private and corporate aviation activity is doing well. Here, there is a genuine need for business travel at schedules and routes convenient to the companies that own these Aircraft. The spurt in the purchase of corporate Aircraft may naturally result in, although not significant at this time, to make a dent in the business class travel on the Airlines in the long run.
Business class makes money for an Airline, lets not make any bones about this fact. In fact business class perhaps subsidizes those sitting back there in the "cattle class". Kingfisher Airlines in India realised that fact and what started out as a high density all economy seating Airline grew into a two class Airline. With that it hope to take on the other established "legacy Airlines".
There are more problems than solutions and not many solution providers. What I'll attempt to do is to keep writing about the problems, hoping that some one takes notice and does something about it. Easier said than done, in India. Solutions sometimes are staring in the face but people fail to recognize them. More in my next post.
