Jun 23, 2006 01:46 PM
8735 Views
Air Deccan has emerged has one of the most promising airlines of India in recent past. There shall not be more cribbing about Air Deccan flights are late or not taken off. It has some achievements under its belt which are significant.
1) It has reversed the trend of - Rich can fly in Indian and proven itself to be one of the better low cost airlines in India.
2) Its rates are r*ally low in comparison to any other airlines.
3) More than 85 % of its flights are on time and reaching destination on time. (AD is claiming it to be more than 92 %, I agree to this fact as my family has flown with Air Deccan for more than 10 times and most of the times they were on time)
4) It has given a chance of flying to common man.
5) It pushed all other Airlines to reduce their towering fares.
6) It is covering more than 50 cities with 50 Aircrafts.
7) It is having 19 % market share in Indian aviation industry.
8) Air Deccan r*ally stands correct on their advertisement – “ For Millions of Indians” where a poor carpenter gets tickets to fly in an aircraft.
After successful initial 2 years of its operation, Air Deccan has started to revise its airfares. What are off late changes in Air Deccan?
1) Initially 15-18 % seats were available for Rs 500 + other charges now it has been reduced. This might be only 10 %. Classic example of management rule - increase the price after market is captured.
2) Initially they have advertised that no fuel surcharge, but now they are charging it Rs 350 /- per ticket (w.e.f. June 11, 2006 )
3) Rs 25 transaction charges have been added, none knows it is for what reasons?
Customer handling efficiency
1) Naturally you find the biggest customer queue against Air Deccan counter at Air port. But their staff is the slowest among all airlines (may be working speed is in line with their lowest salaries in the industry) so Customers are not happy always.
2) Their call centers are not having required staff. Sometime, I have waited for more than 20 minutes for getting someone on line, on the first day when booking was opened. They should have predicted no of calls higher on this day and should have arranged for more people. But not well thought off.
3) If by chance we get someone at other end, you would find their system is very slow which causes you further delay.
4) Even at call center, they are not always having accurate information of flights.
5) Their staff is not handling the luggage always correctly,wheel of my bag was broken once and same thing I saw with my other friend once - Is it a training issue ?
6) If you book ticket through travel agent or call center, Air Deccan would charge you few bucks more - God knows why ? May be only collected amount is distributed as salary to call center people.
7) I can understand that Air Deccan is not giving any free food in flight but they shall provide a small bottle of water complementary. This may change their image of a mere passenger bus.
8) I came to know that sometime they are not providing passenger bus for transportation from Aircraft to Arrival building. It is r*ally bad.
http://www.airdeccan.net & its own problems.
1) It is well known to world that server is slowest among all the airlines servers.
2) On the day when new booking is open, it is almost dead. Even people from their call center, their employees are not able to access website. They know that on the day when booking is open, traffic to website gets doubled. Why not they are making alternate arrangements for special days like that?
3) Most irritating fact is - after feding all information at their slow and dead server, when you try to book ticket, it gives you answer " all tickets with this fare is booked, please make a fresh search". It’s totally ridiculous that they can even give us next category of fare. We need to perform all painful process again.
4) I found an advertisement on today's "The Hindu" that they are running a special Champaign for July month. We though that it is a good chance to go back to Delhi for some days and have a break. I was trying since morning 07.50 a.m. but I was not able to get any page other than home page. I asked my brother to book tickets from Delhi but he was also not able to get beyond home page.
5) When you try to book tickets and found some higher fares for particular day, you can check the fairs and availability of next few days from that page. You need to go to home page again and you need to run a new search. You check any airline's website including Go air and Spice jet, this feature is absolutely required. You reduce great amount of traffic at your home page by this. But Air Deccan is interested in it.
6) From Flight details page, when you come back to home page, you would not find any names in tag - destination city. You need to refresh the page to get list of all available cities.
Even though I have given these many problems, I know we will prefer Air Deccan more often than any other Airlines unless it is a special occasion because of its distinct cost advantage.
Tips for Air Deccan Passengers
1) Try to make a search through https://airdeccan.indiatimes.com. I have found this website faster than https://airdeccan.net but “Be aware of some additional charges”. You never know when Air Deccan charges you more.
2) On day of new booking, you can start a search at 07.50 with 3 windows open and all information filled in. Start making a search at 07.58 a.m. You never know you get a ticket as cheap as Rs 1 or Rs 500.
3) Try to reach airport at least 1 hour before take off. There are some incidences when people have didn't get boarding pass because of excess tickets issued.
4) You may try for e-boarding pass introduced by Air Deccan.
