This document describes the current undesirable situation of airline companies in India and gives a direction to rescue themselves.

1. Rescuing Airlines from the Trap of Cost World
Tracking and Demystifying Inefficiencies within Airline Industry
First Draft
Needs Editing
With this article we start tracking Airline Industry, with a special emphasis on Business
Model Innovation and Operation Excellence.
Key words: Indian Aviation Industry, Airlines, India, Air India, Jet Airways, Kingfisher
Airlines, Spice Jet, Indigo, C. K. Prahlad, Bottom of the Pyramid, BOP, Ramadorai,
Mohandas Pai, TCS Story, Economic Times, Business Model, Business Model
Innovation, Operations, Alfred Angula, Tata Steel, Airline Industry, Managing Aricrafts,
Operating Airline Business, Gartner, Hype Cycle, Easy jet, Ryan air, South West Airlines
________________________________________________________________________
7th Nov 2011
“Airlines in India are in turmoil”, this has been now the headlines for over a couple of
years now.
The argument goes like this:
<start> Indian aviation market is one of world’s most expensive one, due to high levies
on fuel, (appx 24%) and airport charges, (while the base oil price itself has surged 40%
during past year), adverse impact of depreciating Rupees (more than 10% this year, while
more than 1/3rd of operating cost is dollar dependent). Further, the Indian sky has opened
wider, leading to cutthroat competition. And finally, the threat of another slowdown is
looming large. And ……. To come out of this situation, Indian aviation industry believes
that it now needs huge FDI. <end>
Given this situation, airlines are cutting cost by, timely payments to Oil companies ( 10-
15% discount), efficient flying (saving 2%, taxing with one engine, flying short route
flights at low altitudes, better cleaning to reduce friction etc.) and re-negotiating Food
contracts(saving 0.5%).
The industry as a whole feels that, it can not do much about fuel price, depreciating
rupees, artificial low ticket prices. They know that they can bring the cost in other areas.
And so, they are squeezing every penny, laying-off staff, outsource internal work and
adopting automation.
After using all the tricks in the book to cut the cost, it is now waiting for Policy clearance
on foreign investment. Wrong prescription for a classical management problem.
Yes, this is a pretty classical state of industry description.
1
Copyrights ©2011, CVMark Consulting, All rights reserved.

2. Consider this, India is one of the fastest growing aviation market (growing at 20% YOY).
And look at Rahul’s blog (http://www.review-airlines.blogspot.com/) , on Indian aviation
industry, to know how poorly Indian aviation industry is being managed… Kingfisher
hasn’t seen black since 2005. Market leader Jet Airways hasn’t sniffed profits since 2007-
08.
The less said about AirIndia, the better it is. Mohandas Pai’s lamentation in the Economic
Times (today) on the state of affairs at the national carrier is not without reason.
But despite all odds Spicejet and Indigo have shown quick turnaround and healthy
prospects.
The question is, why big airlines are going burst despite significant growth in the
passengers. Their finger pointing on external issues does not seem justified, and least to
one who has spent time in ‘Operations.’
Lets see more things:
Gartner brings out yearly status (or maturity) of different technologies, called hype cycle,
that help technology creating and adopting organizations to build strategies on when they
want to enter the market. Some of the organizations (read start-ups), play early in the
hype cycle, where they build on the initial market euphoria and high valuation, with an
intention to quit when the hype peaks. These hypes are created by media, subject matter
experts, entrepreneurs, investors and consumers by outlandish projection of benefits of
each technology, as the all time best opportunities. And as we know not several of these
early stage companies last longer, despite which a large number of entrepreneurs are able
to cash out rich.
Characteristics in Service sectors in any growing economy, like India, follows a similar
pattern. Whether it is telecom, retail, power, renewables, infrastructure or for that matter
aviation industry. Not for nothing, the sustained high single digit growth of India, led to
setting high expectations and sequential projections, that led to high aspirations of
entrepreneurs and businesses (also government). Organizations, therefore, took long
range shots, but committed and elevated their capacities too early, in the hope that the
growth will be unidirectional. Every airline tried to book and hoard as many aeroplanes
as possible (even created artificial production constraints for aeroplane suppliers), they
recruited and created bench for as many pilots as possible and over built ground and
office resources as much as possible. While they were doing this, they built their books
fatter and claimed higher valuation. They amassed massive debts and operating cost,
much before the demand actually took place. And since the market does not remain as
you think initially, organizations were locked in the debt trap of their investments. As
troubles kicked in, they further lost focus of good business, as their attention was
diverted towards protecting and justifying investment than on increasing revenues.
The way they built their organization was on building infrastructure and capacity, too
early. They followed the philosophy of ‘more from more’, which is a trading mentality
2
Copyrights ©2011, CVMark Consulting, All rights reserved.

3. (and of speculation). Managers after managers brought in new capacity enhancement
plans, new routes, new buying agreements, expensive media expenses, hiring of costly
pilots, all went year after year. The top management got their bonuses and hefty hikes;
and airlines started protecting their investment while the productivity continued to
plummet. And, they waited till the slowdown and global phenomenon to strike, to find a
guinea pig. And now they say that there is a policy constraint.
Thus a majority of these players was to cash on the early hype and build valuation, (and
possibly, exit before the hype peaked). But it did not happen so. Actually, it happens
rarely so.
You can bet that there is no single individual in Airlines Industry, who ever thought that
Fuel prices would not rise the way they did last year, dollar would not fluctuate the way it
has, competition would not kick start the price war, India is not price sensitive etc. Every
body knew it, but were blinded by their forecast and the way people act in a growth
economy. Which means that these risks were considered in the strategic plan itself. So
why are they crying foul, now. Of course, now there is a big deal of when an airline
opens up a new growth story.
The real growth of an organization as we know is, increase in revenue productivity. Thus,
Organizations went all wrong. They never considered productivity as a parameter,
whether productivity of money or people.
Having built the fat, now they cut the fat. In a rush they signed all sorts of contracts and
now they are spending enormous attention of management on re-negotiation, even on
supplies that could be less than 0.1% of their cost. And people who cut the fat or cost
fastest, get the reward and career growth.
The fundamentals remain the same. A business has to sustain and flourish on its own. Its
business model must be innovatively built and operated excellently. Every organization,
need to have a decisive edge for the space it wants to operate. If there are n number of
companies, then there has to be n different business models and n differentiators. No two
companies can be operate the same way in same space for long time. Today, you have
more than two companies with identical business model.
There is no bigger necessary condition for businesses than to increase their revenues, and
these revenues must increase faster than the increase in cost, while other things remain
the same. Plenty of examples are available in airlines and other industries about the
native innovations in business model. Indian airline industry so far rode on the growth
curve of general economic buoyancy, can not do justice to its aspirations if it does not
innovate itself. As of now we do not see any major innovation, than just replication of
Easy jet, Ryan air and South West airlines business model.
Since changes will happen externally as well internally, with notice or without notice,
things have to change by design, quickly within the organizations to make it nimble
enough to deal with change. Of course, the ability to respond faster to change is dictated
3
Copyrights ©2011, CVMark Consulting, All rights reserved.

4. by how flexible and responsive is your ‘operations’. Cost cutting will make one only
slim; but approaches of lean, six sigma and execution excellence could create long term
competitive edge and hedge against changes in market place and prove viability of airline
business.
Why do I say that airlines in India are merely copy pasting external model; because they
lack the behaviour and heart while implementing those models. Take for example, you
would see that in the name of low fare, the airline staff is almost as fickle (sometime
rude) as it can be, without realising that it is still a part of hospitality sector. Often, they
treat low fare or no frill passenger worse than your city bus conductor and driver do.
They are yet to understand, what it means to offer desirable service at low cost. Even for
the bottom of the pyramid, C K Prahlad warned that it is never low cost but lower cost at
the same quality. It is true sometime that you can migrate bus and train passenger to take
flights, but if you do not give the right experience, you would lose your business not too
late. The fact remains that not only low fair airlines have misread the template of their
business models but full service ones that run low frills and full service, you see the
difference in attitude and quality of service. Every body knows that sheer focus on cost is
only going to break the service quality.
Just look at, how well have airlines segmented their customers, not just by their paying
capacity but by intrinsic need of passengers. Luxury clients definitely want to have their
exclusivity, and therefore, mixing both class of passenger takes away the value an airline
provides for luxury loving clients. The erstwhile full service airlines are trying to make a
‘difficult’ balance between the cosy comforts of full service model and low frill model.
But the mistake they are making is often an ugly compromise for both the model. As we
know, a compromise is not a sustainable solution, for it places your staff as well as the
passengers into great conflicts on regular basis. What is needed is separation of the two
model with a win for both class of clients, since the airlines are not yet matured to find
synergy between the two types of operations.
What spice jet and indigo have done is precisely being focused on a particular segment of
clients and allow themselves to grow naturally. They are trying to promise what they can
deliver, and not more. So passengers have the right expectations. They are creating a
difference on the level of satisfaction based on their promise, that is only increasing with
time with their competitors. Now as they move ahead, they are going to create loyal
clients who got used to their commitment. And it is just the time that they are going to
add other benefits to their clients. Contrary to the general operation philosophy of huge
economy of scale is not a necessarily a key reason condition for their early stage superior
performance, they have modeled their business and executed the model in such a focused
way that they are able to create a unique experience to passengers with just enough scale.
And as it is, the market is big enough not just for existing airlines, but for a few more.
Big boys, Jet, KF and Air India, all thought that by having best of both world, they would
derive huge scale of operations, and ran after market share; but they failed royally in
trying to grab market share and made ugly compromises. This has nothing to say that
bigboys’ business is not profitable, it only means that they have got their model mixed up
4
Copyrights ©2011, CVMark Consulting, All rights reserved.

5. and wrong, with what ever objective they built it, it is not built to transform with the
changes in airline as well as external industry. Also the lessons they need to learn is that
when the opportunity is aplenty, instead of committing to fulfil all needs of the market, it
is important to fulfil at least one significant need of the clients like no other player can
and would, and thereby create a differentiator. Today, low cost airlines have created at
least one such significant need of the clients by an order of margin compared to full
service players.
Now as airline industry looks forward, the investment policy for investment of foreign
airlines would come in when it would come in, but that should not be the reason for the
existing airlines to improve their business model. By waiting for the policy to come and
then act, will be too late. Nothing prevents them from getting operationally prepared,
when the policy comes and have a head start. As of now, not many are really thinking
about the head start, they are looking at a valuation game a la telecom, power and
infrastructure sector.
The release of TCS Story and beyond by its CEO, Ramadorai, is timely in this respect,
and airline industry as a whole has a lot to learn from it. It tells why not to blame external
parameters that could be as strong as license restrictions or policy inadequacy. TCS is a
story of dreaming to fulfil a necessity to bring India on global road map, about entering
intellectual business, and making is happen, irrespective of odds. It just happened that
after a decade of its entry , opportunities followed a plenty. You would also understand
from the book, why TCS is a class apart and why TATA is a brand that it is, because its
business is not born to exploit an opportunity, but fulfil a need, meet a necessity and
solve a problem. TCS has its own business model and its own DNA.
Let’s see how things unfold, even when more passengers are taking flights. It will be
worth watching how organizations battle it out, and if they make business model
innovation and operation excellence, central to their business. The least they should
blame is unfair low pricing by competitors or policy bottlenecks for investment. The guy
who created disruption in pricing, has already encashed his investment and in any
industry, there can not be too many Captain Gopinath; it is time to operate the system
more efficiently and effectively, that is where the buck lies. There is no other way, “Take
it or leave it”, as my friend Alfred Angula, the mass leader from Namibia says.
There are a plenty of ways to improve operations of airlines. But do you have pearl of
ideas that seamlessly weave into a business model that can make a successful and unique
airline business. And most importantly, it should not only be built to perform profitably
today, it must also sustain its superlative performance in future as well.
If you look at the performance of Spicejet during the past two years (this year Q1 was a
blip), you would get some idea, but I am still not convinced about the future as they ‘buy’
more aircrafts and a large number of aircraft will cause them to get into higher
maintenance cost as well as downtime (read B, C and D checks.) and if they are aware of
innovating their model. Their last years annual report says that their performance was
mainly due to high load factor. And you can very easily understand that load factor is
5
Copyrights ©2011, CVMark Consulting, All rights reserved.

6. nothing but the utilization, which is a prime operational metric. Spicejet is what it is
today, primarily because of operational excellence and the way they opened up their
business model ‘one step at a time’. For them cost reduction is not the driver, rather cost
effectiveness is inbuilt in the design itself (a la TataSteel). So they do not take knee jerk
reaction to worsening situations around.
There are three layers the way you drive your revenues ( and Spicejet is not too far in
working on them). First Flight Plan- the sector-wise distribution of flights, which comes
in the domain of flight planning. Second- Aircraft availability, which is how fast aircraft
is turned around in B, C and D check (as of now, because of leased airlines, Spicejet is
not facing the burden of D-check on its availability), this is in the domain of operation
engineering and maintenance department (MRO). Third –Utilization, which is the load
factor, i.e. revenue per available seat kilometre. It is not just these 3 parameters that
Spicejet has excelled and is ahead of others, the important point is that, Spicejet did not
blindly copy paste any body’s business model. Rather it leveraged advantages of their
being new organization and avoided all the disadvantages of the incumbents, which is an
inherent characteristics of a successful Startup company. They are just 6 yrs old, and still
seem to have the agility in their business model to meet external challenge.
The fundamental that organizations somehow miss is that investment in business is done
to create value and generate revenue. Without creating enough value with the already
invested money, trying to seek more investment is not the way to meet the demand. Look
at the operational parameters of full service airlines and look at their operating
parameters, they actually have not done justice to their investment. So their call for more
investment does not hold water. Keep it simple, organizations are not able to operate as
promised. They must first operate the existing business more effectively and efficiently,
before they ask for more money and changes in policies. And Rahul is pretty much right in
complaining on behalf of stakeholders, for the enormous loss these organizations have
caused.
So do you see any good movement in the thinking process of other airlines. Let me know
if you got any idea, on how Indian airliners need to move ahead. Or wait for a complete
business model, when it comes out here.
Clet:32-11
6
Copyrights ©2011, CVMark Consulting, All rights reserved.

7. ___________________________________________________________________
CVMark handholds business leaders in creating organizations that are built to transform.
For developing, innovating and executing your business model, call Tel: +91 94480 70081 or Email details to : lolla@cvmark.com .
CVMark Consulting, #2304, Nandi Park, Gottegere, Bannergatta Road, Bangalore 560083, INDIA Web: http://www.cvmark.com
7
Copyrights ©2011, CVMark Consulting, All rights reserved.