AI plans to woo back passengers

For air passengers who have been haggling with the travel agents over high fares and low seat availability for the last four days due to Air India (AI) crisis – it is time to breathe easy.

The national carrier is working on special discount offers to woo back its lost passengers. “Yes, we are going to announce special discounts for our passengers. We are working on the details as in to what extent and which routes these discounts should be offered. The minimum discount will be 10 per cent,” a senior AI official, who did not wish to be named, said.

The carrier has lost over 50 per cent of its passengers in the five days of strike. It had stopped bookings from Monday night which opened only on Wednesday afternoon.

The focus is now to add new passengers. “People who were planning to travel immediately must have cancelled their bookings and must have got tickets of some other carriers. The discounted fares will help us gain back passengers who are going to fly in the next few days,” the AI official said.The passenger traffic for AI has come down to about 14,000 from about 33,000 in the normal days. The offer – likely to be announced by Thursday – will not have much impact on international bookings though.

“The international bookings are done much in advance. Once a passenger has cancelled his booking, it is unlikely that he will book his tickets before a month. So, it is difficult to win back those passengers,” he said.

The carrier has lost about Rs 130 crore in the last five days due to pilots strike. The huge cancellations in the booking have give equally significant traffic to the private carriers. While the usual seat factor for these airlines varies between 70-80 per cent during festival season, this went up to 90 per cent due to AI cancellations. “AI will have to offer special fares to attract customers. The carrier has lost about 70,000 passengers in the last five days. They will have to take initiatives to win them back,” Ankur Bhatia, executive director of Bird Group said.

It restarted operating long haul flights including Delhi-Frankfurt-Chicago, Mumbai-Franfurt-Newark, Mumbai-London, Delhi-London, Amritsar-London-Toronto and Ahmedabad-Frankfurt. For domestic routes, it has drawn up a flight restoration plan. It cancelled 111 flights on Wednesday in advance due to non availability of pilots. The flights will be gradually reinstated.

Source:
ChronicleDate- 1 October 2009
Edition- New Delhi
http://www.mydigitalfc.com/industrial-policy/ai-plans-woo-back-passengers-219