Vested interests hurt Indian aviation: Tony

Malaysia-based low cost carrier AirAsia chief Tony Fernandes on Wednesday said a lot of people in India had suffered and that the country had lost many years of growth in the aviation sector due to its “incredibly self-interested economy”.

He criticised certain “bizarre” rules in the aviation sector in India such as that a scheduled airline has to complete five years of domestic operations in India to be able to fly abroad.

In this context, he said vested interests and negativity from within the airline industry were responsible for such rules in the first place.

In a lighter vein, Mr Fernandes even named the promoter of a prominent private carrier in the country as being “probably” responsible for the “bizarre” rule.

Asked about his well- known low-cost model that can enable even the poorer sections of society to fly, Mr Fernandes said he believed in costabsorption through revenue generation.

When asked about the failure of the erstwhile low-cost carrier Air Deccan to sustain operations independently, he said Air Deccan founder Capt. Gopinath had got the revenue model right but the cost model wrong. “Air Deccan didn’t have the balance sheet to take on the guys (existing carriers then) who had a lot more of cash and so could price it out of the market,” Mr Fernandes said.

He also described the revenue management by existing Indian carriers as “immature”.

Air Deccan was eventually bought by Kingfisher which itself ceased operations a few years later.

In response to a question, Mr Fernandes said Indian national carrier Air India should not be in the hands of the Government and should be owned by a private organisation.

Mr Fernandes said a lot of Malaysians fly to South India. He said the focus (for the new carrier) would be southern India and then to fly up to northern India.