Indian Civil Aviation Vindication Of The Low Cost Model

NINE YEARS after the first fixed-wing flight by man, India traipsed into its own civil aviation journey; in December 1912 the first domestic air route between Karachi and Delhi was launched as an extension of the London- Karachi flight by imperial airways, a British airline.

- GP Capt AK Sachdev (Retd)

Two decades later, the first scheduled air service was flown on a Puss Moth from Karachi to Mumbai by the doyen of Indian civil aviation --- JRD Tata. Nine air transport companies had sprung up by the time India got its independence when one of them moved over to Pakistan. in 1948 a joint sector company air India international Ltd was established between the Government and Air India (earlier Tata Airline); it was headed by JRD Tata. all the airlines hit turbulence in the 1950s and the government decided to merge all of them into Indian airlines or air India through the air Corporation act 1953. The state monopoly established by that act over domestic and international aviation was to continue until the 1990s when Indian civil aviation witnessed a short spell of liberalisation which ended in a whimper with only two airlines surviving. The next big thing to happen to Indian civil aviation was the appearance on the scene of Air Deccan in august 2003--- India's first low-cost carrier. since then the majority of the Indian air travellers have shown a predilection towards the low-cost model.

FULL-SCALE LEGACY