Mumbai headquartered Low Cost Carrier (LCC) Akasa Air has launched “Akasa Priority” and joins the bandwagon of similar services offered by fellow carriers Air India Express, SpiceJet and market leader IndiGo. The passengers will be offered priority check-in, boarding and baggage service. The service is available in both domestic and international sectors.
Akasa Air will have a Priority Check-in, allowing customers to skip the queues; a priority bag service which will ensure the bag arrives “among” the first at the destination and Priority Boarding allowing customers to board ahead of others. The service can be pre-booked online or purchased at the airport, one hour before departure for domestic flights and two hours before departure for international flights. The airline will charge INR 700 per sector, per passenger for domestic flights and INR 800, per sector, per passenger for International flights.
The airline will compete with Air India Express, which offers “Express Ahead” as a service which comprises the same things,Priority check-in, boarding and baggage on arrival. The service is priced at INR 400 for domestic and INR 700 for international, when pre-booked while it is INR 500 and INR 900 respectively for domestic and international when purchased at the airport.
SpiceJet, which is neck to neck on market share with Akasa Air, also provides this service named “Skip the Queue” offering the same three things, Priority check-in, boarding and baggage on arrival. It is priced at INR 499 for domestic and INR 699 for International.
Market leader IndiGo also has a similar offering which is named “Fast Forward” which is priced at INR 500 and offers priority check-in and boarding. However, the airline has removed the “baggage out first” promise a few months ago and also adjusted the pricing on the downward side. Full service carrier Air India also offers a similar service named “ZipAhead” which allows economy class passengers to use priority check-in desks at Premium Economy counters and offers priority tagged baggage which will be clubbed with premium economy class baggage. This service is available at the six metro airports and for INR 499 when booked up to six hours to departure and INR 699 when booked within six hours to departure.
Ancillary revenue has been looked at by all airlines equally. There never is a revenue stream too many when it comes to low cost carriers. However, the airline should have the scale and size to justify the costs. In this case, the need of a separate counter calling out for “Akasa Priority” followed by separate baggage handling to ensure that the promise is met will be the core. IndiGo, for example, got rid of its priority baggage on belt feature since that meant having a separate section in the hold for priority baggage and ensuring that it comes out first. The efforts vis a vis cost comparison would have led to the airline deciding not to spend as much and instead downgrade the offering with a perceived proportional downgrade in cost of the offering. For Akasa Air, the fleet size is just right to start this offering and test the waters before investing further. The airline is maturing in terms of its operations which allows it some leeway to ensure that it can add certain complexities in its operations.
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