If low cost carriers (LCC) are dominating the Indian skies with over 60 per cent market share due to their ability to offer low fares and maintaining on time performance, they are also found to be the favourites of majority Indians while travelling to nearby international destinations due to the affordability factor.
According to a survey, conducted by Northstar for Expedia on LCCs operating in the Asia-Pacific region, 51 per cent flights Indians took in the last 12 months were on LCCs when flying within Asia.
When flying outside Asia, LCCs accounted for 33 per cent of the flights taken by Indian travellers, according to the survey.
Following demand for low fare flights, the supply in Asia-Pacific is expected to increase by 9.5 per cent year-on-year in March, according to the study, which polled 3,200 travellers in India and ten other countries studying the tradeoffs between fares and frills.
The survey examined perceptions regarding customer service and perks between LCCs and traditional carriers and asked about which sacrifices travellers were most willing to make to save money. The most important deciding factor when choosing a carrier is the airline’s safety track record, the survey adds.
“According to the survey, ‘saving money’ is ranked second behind ‘airline safety track record’ in terms of being most important when choosing the airline. Men are slightly more willing to sacrifice amenities to save money,” said James Marshall, Senior Director, Tour & Transport APAC, Expedia.
“Despite being a highly cost sensitive market, Indians are willing to accept slightly lower level of customer service to save money (58 per cent) on flights. The general thought behind flying a LCC is to replace their train tickets with a faster mode of travel or a trip with large number of people that could be friends or family,” Vikram Malhi, Managing Director-Asia, Expedia, said.
“A trend that we have seen with Indians is that some of them are choosing to fly LCCs and then using the money saved to upgrade their hotels for the trip”, he added.
According to the survey, in terms of specific LCCs, Indians were most likely to have flown on SpiceJet (67 per cent have flown on this carrier in the past two years), IndiGo (65 per cent) and Go Air (38 per cent). When it comes to international LCCs, AirAsia is the most common, with 37 per cent of Indians having flown on this carrier in the past two years, it said.
