Air travel in India

My boarding passes from September 2010 to March 2011

I was just going through my photos folder and found the above photo tucked away in the 'photos from mobile phone' folder. I remembered why I had taken the photo earlier - it was because I was surprised how many times I had to travel by air within that span of a few months, and for reasons mostly not related to my work.

Air travel in India has increased in leaps and bounds barring a few hiccups, which were triggered mainly by the recession. Being a consumer for this product, I can now easily see the value that it provides to people like me. It is fast, reliable and largely efficient service(ease of booking tickets) which is affordable. The major change in the last decade has been on the reliability and the affordability front. Entry to private players and the resulting competition ensured that services were more varied, networks more widespread and prices driven down. At the same time the income levels of the burgeoning Indian middle class increased. All this coupled with the IT boom and the large scale migration of white collar workers resulted in large volume sales for the airlines.

From the boarding passes in the above pic, no guess for which airline is my favorite. Indigo has been awarded multiple times as the  best performer with respect to punctuality, offers some of the lowest prices while keeping their service quality very decent. No wonder it is one of the very few (probably the only one) that is actually making money in the Indian domestic aviation business. 

This post brings me on the fringes of e-commerce in India. It is an interesting topic which I would like to post something about soon.

Currently favorite song: Kagaz ki Kashti