Grey Skies

WHEN VIJAY MALLYA started Kingfisher Airlines, he decided to dazzle the customer with glamour and luxury. So, you had supermodels on screens attached to the seat ahead showing safety instructions. We know how that story panned out. Indigo took a different approach. Instead of focusing on wowing the customer, it would do efficiently what the customer came to it in the first place—go from one destination to another on time. Through the years, while some have looked with annoyance at how little ef­fort is spent by it on humouring special requests, the airline usually delivered on its limited promise. It was enough to make Indigo the leading company in this sector. For a brief while, it almost seemed to become a monopoly of sorts. But any state of affairs can break down occasionally, especially when forces of nature decide to have a say. That was how recently, when winter fog disrupt­ed the schedules of airlines in India, Indigo, being the biggest of them, bore the maximum brunt. The peak of the crisis arrived when a passenger, after being delayed by half-a-day, walked up and assaulted a pilot who was giving an update inside the flight that wouldn't take off. It was caught on video and became immediately viral.

What is interesting in the public response is that there was first anger against the attacker and then slowly the pendulum seemed to be swinging in the other direction as more and more online voices began to share horror stories of being stuck and cold shouldered at the airport or inside stalled airplanes. Another image would add to the narrative. A bevy of pas­sengers sat down on the tarmac and protested at Mumbai airport and were then given food right there seated on the ground. This prompted the Direc­torate General of Civil Aviation to fine the airline as well as the airport.

There must be a thesis about customer service in all this for busi­ness management scholars. This is an infrequent, once or twice a year, situation when fog does its havoc, but should a company change a formula that has worked so extraordinarily well merely to prevent a temporary public relations blip? The reason for Indigo's no-nonsense attitude is that it is in a phe­nomenally competitive industry where most go bust. Survival depends on keep­ing costs as low as possible and using large volumes to offset low margins. To be like a Kingfisher and make custom­ers feel like kings doesn't mean much when you soon run out of cash to even keep flights going. The culture of any company is also not very malleable. It cannot be frugal one day and lavish the next. The reason other no-frills airlines haven't been able to replicate Indigo's success is because they were not as able in creating such a culture. Indigo's focus on punctuality has been maintained reasonably well as its primary mission. Chances are you will not see any change in its style despite the recent occurrenc­es. For no one with commonsense fixes something that isn't broken and makes handsome profits.