India Flying

 

 

I didn't believe it, when Air India got into "Breaking News" announcing they made a profit. Because that is unbelievable. But then they did it again when they set a supposed "world record" for flying the longest non-stop flight. The news was first reported on Flightradar, and everyone else has simply copied over the content and reported it verbatim. And with the Indian government's new plan to make flying cheaper and affordable to Indians under their Udaan program, the focus is back on flying and planes.

Apparently, the government plans to cap the cost of 1-hour domestic flights to a certain amount. This will make it more affordable to the commonfolk (mango-men). But then I recalled reading another article which said that India already has the lowest prices for flying domestic !

Research by Kiwi.com, an online flight comparison site, states that the average cost per 100km to fly domestic in India is 3.25 USD !! And the low cost rate is actually lesser at 2.27 USD. And yes, currently that is the cheapest in the world. The most expensive country to fly is...UAE, with a rate of 105 USD per 100 kms. That’s about 50 times costlier.

Well this news changes everything we thought about flying in India. On one side, flyers kept complaining of hidden charges and 'convenience' fees on their flight tickets. On the other side, the airline companies complained that the cost of aviation fuel was extremely high, and that they were simply passing over that cost to the end customer, the passenger. So airline companies in India have been already providing the cheapest flights in the world in spite of these huge costs.

I hope this trend continues. India already has the cheapest telephone rates in the world, which is a mainstay of today’s living. Flying is still a distant dream for most Indians and I hope a few more of them can take to the skies, before all the Indian Airline companies get taxed to the ground.