It's difficult being a new airline in India

Surviving as a new airline is difficult – in fact, unimaginable – in India. Witness the number of carriers that that have vanished without a trace. AMEYA JOSHI details the reasons why startup airlines are smothered by the larger entities.

- AMEYA JOSHI

In the last days of 2020, the year most dreaded by the aviation community worldwide, a new airline took to the skies in India. Flybig, as the airline was named, had already operated its first flight between w and Delhi albeit with a SpiceJet aircraft! The airline announced a route network which would connect its base Indore with Raipur, Ahmedabad, and connect Ahmedabad with Bhopal.

Within days of announcing the routes, India’s largest airline by fleet and domestic market share – IndiGo – launched flights between Ahmedabad and Bhopal. A new airline like Flybig was hunted even before it could venture into the wild forest. Flybig has been cancelling flights, combining frequencies as it manages to plug the cash burn to sustain in current times where traffic is impacted further due to a rising second wave of COVID-19 infections and new travel restrictions across the country.

Flybig is not the first one in this saga! A staggering 14 airlines have merged or closed down in India in the last two decades! These include the likes of Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines which have been backed by powerful promoters yet raked up a few thousand crores in debt leading to their eventual fall as all sources of funding dried up and the airlines were not in a position to make money to cover its operating cost and pay for the interest over its existing debt.