An airline without budgets

Paramount Airways, an Indian airline which offers only Business Class seats is going to take off soon. The promoter hails from the business house, which was instrumental in founding Bank of Madura (which was later acquired by ICICI Bank). The airline flies in the following sectors: Coimbatore – Delhi, Delhi – Cochin, Coimbatore - Chennai. Although such concepts have existed in the US, this is novel concept as far as the Indian airline industry is concerned. It is too early to write them off. Paramount made news when they ordered Embraer Aircraft at the Paris Air Show. Following Paramount’s footsteps, liquor baron Vijay Mallya is also planning to order some Embraer aircraft for his Kingfisher Airlines.

The 70-seater Paramount's Embraer jet is to operate its maiden flight on September 23. The flight scheduled to leave Coimbatore at 6.10 a.m. will arrive in Delhi at 9 a.m. non-stop. On the return direction, it will leave Delhi at 9.40 a.m. and arrive in Kochi at 12.50 p.m. Leaving Kochi at 1.20 p.m., it would arrive in Delhi by 4.30 p.m. The flight will again leave Delhi at 5 p.m. and arrive in Coimbatore at 8 p.m. The flight will then leave for Chennai at 8.10 pm and reach Chennai at 9.05 pm. On the return journey, the flight will leave Chennai at 9.35 pm and reach Coimbatore by 10.30 pm.

The above schedule is way too packed for them to promise on-time arrival and departure. Any small jinx anywhere might throw their schedules out of gear. It is a well-known fact that there are huge landing queues in airports like Delhi. A 30-minute turnaround time will be quite difficult to achieve. It’s still not clear whether Paramount has outsourced its ground handling operations like what Kingfisher did.

Most of the new airlines have restricted themselves to the main metros and Paramount should be praised for their guts to target the smaller metros like Cochin and Coimbatore. I am a bit skeptical about the viability of running a full service airline (which offers only Business Class seats) from Coimbatore/Cochin to Delhi. I hope they have done their market studies before taking the plunge. If this model doesn’t click, they always have the option of rebranding themselves and offering discounted / APEX fares.

budJET?

I was shocked to hear the Singapore radio channels referring to Jet Airways as an Indian budget carrier. I’m sure none of them have travelled in Jet before.