Less luggage means cheaper air tickets, read to know how!
With the new guidelines that grant the airlines to charge an extra fee for check-in luggage, low-cost companies like IndiGo, GoAir and AirAsia can attract the customers with low-cost fares if they book a flight with only cabin bag and no extra luggage
The Indian airlines can now charge passengers with extra fare for carrying check-in baggage after the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) allowed airline to ‘unbundle’ their services last week, Business Standard reported.
Termed as profit maximization strategy, ‘unbundling’ means dividing a product or service into separate elements and selling them at different prices. Price-sensitive customers are primarily the target audience behind the adoption of such strategies.
In 2016, DGCA had asked the airlines to charge up to Rs 200 in case a passenger booked a hand luggage fare but ended up with extra check-in luggage. However, Rs 200 was not a significant price and people often chose to pay the extra charge and carry the extra luggage along. The rule did not help the aviation industry with any commercial success but only put them into more trouble.
With the new guidelines that grant the airlines to charge an extra fee for check-in luggage, low-cost companies like IndiGo, GoAir and AirAsia can attract the customers with low-cost fares if they book a flight with only cabin bag and no extra luggage.
“Most of the tier-1 routes, which are between metro cities, are heavily dominated by corporate traffic where passengers normally travel with a laptop bag and return the same day. They don’t need the 15 kg baggage allowance. The new rules by DGCA will allow us to provide them with a lower fare structure,” the report quoted an industry executive as saying.
The entire process of moving check-in baggage of the passengers from the airport to the trucks and finally loaded onto the aircraft is manual and requires money, time and effort. Unloading the luggage at the destination and putting it on the airport carousel is cumbersome too. In case of passengers travelling through a connecting flight, the process of loading and unloading of luggage gets further elongated.
Charging of extra luggage might as well help create a behavioral change amongst passengers who stopped demanding for ticket printouts as soon as the airports began charging for the same. At the same time, it will help bring more money to the airlines which has already seen some of its darkest days in the last year due to the out break of covid-19 pandemic.