Travel Lite with GoAir Flights

GoAir airline of India operates on the low-cost business model. This model is characterised by lowest airfares without any attached frills of services, such as meals or entertainment inside the cabin. As per the rules of civil aviation authority in India, airlines are required to provide an allowance of certain baggage to the passengers. Typically, the allowance for domestic routes is 15 kg of checked in baggage and 7 kg of cabin baggage per person for economy class travel. However, the airlines, while permitting this allowance have also been encouraging passengers to leave their checked in bags at home and travel with only the hand baggage. To end this, they have added another fare class to their tickets. Go Air flights can now be booked on GoLite fares with the same objective.

As per the rules of these fares, the persons with only hand baggage are charged less sum for their tickets. It also gives passengers the option of paying only for their seat and a piece of hand baggage when they have no checked in luggage to carry. These fares are applicable on all domestic GoAir flights, for both non-stop and via-flights.

If passengers have to check in their baggage after buying these fares, airline charges some nominal additional fee for it. The fee is more if check-in is done at the airport than done online. In the event, the passengers refuse to pay these charges at the airport, before getting the boarding pass, airline reserves the right to deny the boarding to such passengers and can even forfeit the entire ticket fare (except government taxes).

Passengers are allowed to carry only 1 piece of cabin baggage under this fare category and that should not weigh more than 7 kg and have a sum of more than 115 centimetres in length, breadth and height. If the weight exceeds, there will be an additional charge of Rs 250 per excess kg. However, passengers are allowed to carry a regular sized laptop bag or ladies hand bag along with this cabin baggage without entailing any additional costs.

On Go Air flights originating from airports at Jammu and Kashmir, there is no provision of carrying cabin baggage due to security reasons. In that scenario when a passenger books a GoLite fare ticket from airports at Jammu and Kashmir, the bag will have to be checked in. All other conditions of carriage remain the same.

The rationale of introducing these Hand Baggage Only fares stems from the fact that more load due to checked in baggage on the aircraft reduces the fuel efficiency of these carriers. Since fuel costs comprise one-third of the operational costs, it makes sense to reduce the fuel consumption in every possible way. One of the ways to do it is to increase the fuel efficiency of the airplanes. Encouraging people not to bring their checked in bags is aimed at reducing the load on airplanes. Thus, introducing GoLite fares is one of the measures to meet the objective of improving fuel efficiency. 

Impact of New Rules on Air Ticket Fare

Technologies used in the aviation industry, including ingeniously designed engines, navigation tools and in-flight amenities have been replaced with new ones. Earlier, most of the metro cities were served by various airlines, but now flights to Bhopal, Varanasi, Lucknow and many other II as well as III tier cities can be availed as well. In addition to this, management strategies have also been revised to meet the dynamic market challenges and this is the reason that some changes are needed in aviation rules also. Although, a number of new regulations have been introduced, but old ones can also be seen revised in the coming months.

In response to issues regarding licences to Malaysia-based AirAsia and soon to be launched Vistara for global operation, the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) commented on the 5/20 rule. As per this rule, every airline set up in India needs to have a fleet size of at least 20 aircraft and must complete 5 years of operation, then only licence for international operation will be given to it. However, FIA, formed back in 2006 by Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir, IndiGo and Jet Airways, resisted this policy and said that it needs to be changed. A few months back, this law was asked to be waived off, but the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) kept it intact.

However, one of the DGCA ministers said that no other country follows this rule; hence, it can be removed from the list pre-requisite conditions. The relevance of this law has been lost because of increased safety standards and application of the latest technologies as well as attempt of global operators to cater niche markets of various countries. The Associate Chambers of Commerce (ASSOCHAM) also released a paper mentioning that this policy of government has no logic in the current market scenario. This policy was drawn almost a decade back, and many new carriers have entered in the industry since then, as well as the country has undergone significant changes regarding air travel demands, since then. Today, air ticket fare is almost half of what it used to be 10 years back.