10 October 2009,
WASHINGTON: It was a deal -- a steal! -- too good to be true. It really was.
Regulars on the US-India flight route erupted in joy last week when British Airways offered, erroneously as it turned out, a $40 round-trip fare (plus taxes, fees and surcharge) from any city in the US to any destination in India.
Scores of eager beaver flyers snagged the tickets in the two-hour window on October 2, before BA realized its error and shut down the offer, even as word about the Gandhi Jayanti gift sped through the desi bush telegraph.
Now BA says it cannot honor the tickets because it was a systems' glitch. The airline claims it was actually filing for a $40 increase in fares between US and India and somewhere down the line the plus sign got knocked off.
"As these fares were so clearly below the normal fare levels, British Airways is unable to honor these bookings," the airline said in an e-mail to travel agents. "We have cancelled all affected bookings made during this two-hour window, and will make a full refund for any paid for and issued ticket."
Not so fast, say furious customers. Many of them say they have made other onward bookings and plans. Some dumped other airlines and tickets, incurring a cancellation fee, to pile on the BA bonanza.
Besides, say some customers, the $40 fare tag is misleading. "What they're leaving out is that taxes and fees amount to $530+. So sure it is a good deal, but not a give-away by any means," one buyer wrote to the LA Times travel blog, which first broke the story. Others said they paid between $600 to $700 including taxes, fees, and surcharge, and insist BA should honor the deal.
On Friday, BA budged just a bit, offering a $ 300 discount on a future BA fare to India in addition to the full refund. In its e-mail to travel agents, the airline apologized for the error and said refunded customers could get an additional $300 off "any published retail World Traveller fare from the US to India when booked between now and Nov. 12, 2009." It said the offer was valid for travel through Sept. 30, 2010.
It remains to be seen if buyers are pacified.
The public relations fiasco underlines the steady decline of European airlines and against emerging Gulf and eastern carriers for the US-India market, even as state-owned Air India is flailing around.
For the longest time, European carriers such as BA, KLM, Air France and Lufthansa have had a run of the US-India route, especially from the East Coast, with transit through European hubs. But now gulf carriers such as Qatar Airways and Emirates are muscling into the market, enticing Indian flyers to fly through the Doha and Dubai, instead of through London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt etc.
Commencing Sunday, Qatar Airways will begin a direct service four times a week from its Doha base to Amritsar, allowing a wide base of Sikhs/Punjabi diaspora in North America (where it flies direct to Washington DC, Houston/Dallas among other cities), Europe, Africa and the Gulf/West Asia region to make their Golden Temple pilgrimage expeditiously.
The airline, which already flies from Doha to eight other cities in India, will also begin a Doha-Goa service on October 25, making it one of the "best spread" foreign airlines in India. Qatar flies directly non-stops from Doha to Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Kozhikode. A Doha-Bangalore flight is next in line.
Likewise, its Gulf rival Emirates (over which Qatar brags a five-star rating) offers a several connections into Indian cities for Indian expats flying in from U.S. Many flyers from the US prefer a 13-hour first leg to Gulf hubs (allowing eight hours of sleep) which brings them within 3-4 hours to India, rather than the approximately 7 hour-9 hour split while flying from US to India via Europe.
Not surprisingly, all six airlines which have a Skytrax five-star rating (Qatar, Kingfisher, Cathay Pacific, Asiana, Singapore and Malaysia) are Asian, with no European or American airline making the grade.
Crisis ridden Air India meanwhile is trying to retrieve the situation in a U.S market where it has poor ratings. Starting December 1, India's sarkari airline is going to meet a long standing demand from passengers in the Washington DC region to connect directly to New Delhi.
"Direct" but not non-stop, since the flight will be a Washington DC--New York--New Delhi-Kolkata shuttle. The current New York-Delhi non-stop is just getting an extension at both ends. Still, it's the first step in directly linking the two capitals with the same aircraft. There are already Washington DC-Tokyo and Washington DC-Beijing direct non-stops.
No comments:
Post a Comment