Saturday, April 23, 2011

Affordable Airline Bookings

With the increased inflation rates, the purchasing ability of public has gone down. Amenities which were affordable to pocket few years back cannot be purchased now. One such lavishness is air travel. Keeping in view the augmented need for the low air fares, certain airlines carriers have started operating specifically to cater the untouched part that was not noticed by the normal costly airlines. With the different model, these airlines cater all those who want to have luxury at low cost.

The foundation behind the whole working idea of cheap airlines is “no frills”. The word directs to the notion of giving no additional and value added services to the customers and charging for the basic service which in this scenario is Air travel service. By applying this model, these airlines serve the broad need of traveling by air.
Most of the no frill airlines have only the economy class of seating offered and even single type of aircrafts to cut down the training required for the staff. All extra seating services like seat recliners, window blinds, seat pockets, and head rest are not given to provide the customers with cheap flights.

Some of them even follow the self-service model. The airlines give almost no on board entertainments to the travellers to pass on the cost cutting advantage to them. The pricing scheme for most of them is also simple, the one way ticket costs half of the price for round trip. Similarly, the prices of the tickets would increase if the plane is full, therefore early reservations means cheap tickets.

Low cost airline also cuts invisible monetary and non monetary costs linked with the travel e.g. the turn around time of the plane, the seat allocation time wasted and the use of secondary airports to evade rush and traffic, keeping the weight of the aircraft less by permitting less baggage, only direct sales of air tickets to avoid giving commissions to the travel consultancies, no in flight meals served, and a no repayment policy in cases of missed flights make it easy for them to provide low air fares to the clients.

With the increased number of players in the air travel industry, the rivalry among the low cost carriers has enhanced resulting in further lowering of prices. At times the prices are promoted as “free flights” with only taxes and additional charges applicable on them. However the broad price policy may be very dynamic with heavily discounted tickets in promotions. But sometimes, the prices may increase than the expectation leading to customer dissatisfaction but such instances are unusual.

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