Every other day we hear about the airlines slashing their rates in the guise of Monsoon Sales, Independence Day offer or any other festive sales offer to lure customers. However lucrative it may appear to the onlookers, it forces some to ponder if there is an other side to this.
Leading airlines today are leaving no stones unturned to catch the attention of potential customers and taking every single measure to ensure that they are always in the minds of the people; be it by advertisements on newspapers, televisions or shooting promotional mailers to the people.What is it that makes the leading airlines throw such discounted offers every now and then? To attract the potential customers for sure, but apart from that does it indicate a negative growth in the airline traffic?
Frequent sales and discounted fares and still coming out with more such offers certainly indicate a decline in the air traffic and eventually loss for the airlines floating them. For one, the airlines are already witnessing a dip in the travelers, and next they bring their fare down to add woes to their bleeding wounds; the result: premature closure of the airlines. And this is evident from the fact that leading airline Jet Airways is speculated to be in talks to sell off their low-cost arm JetLite to other low cost carriers in the country.
Another news that created a stir recently and which also supports our question is that of SpiceJet promoter and media baron Kalanithi Maran was in talks with potential buyers to sell his majority stake in the low-cost airline, owing to a record loss of Rs 1003.24 crore in the last financial year.
Keeping these instances in mind, it won’t be wrong to say that if such is the trend at present, the discount war might soon be seen as a collective doom for the airline industry.