Nilesh Pinto Moneycontrol News
SpiceJet was the most high-profile of the five airlines authorised on Thursday to fly to far-flung Indian cities under the government’s Regional Connectivity Scheme. But another name caught the eye – Air Deccan.
The government scheme proposes to connect the under-served and unserved areas of the country at a subsidised cost. For Rs 2,500, a passenger will soon be able to travel between big cities and small towns.
For the founder of Air Deccan, this is familiar territory. After all, Captain Gopinath pioneered the concept of low-cost air travel in India, In fact, the Regional Connectivity Scheme’s Hindi name – Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (Let the common man fly) – was his vision.
In the mid-1990s, Gopinath started a private sector commercial helicopter service called Deccan Aviation. In 2003, he started Air Deccan, the country’s first low-cost commercial airline. It was an alien concept to India but triggered a phenomenon of budget carriers.
Air Deccan advertised cheap, no-frills air travel and enabled many Indians to take their first flight. It even offered base fares of Re 1 (excluding taxes and surcharges).
Within four years, the airline went on to make USD 1.1 billon in revenue and connect more than 69 cities, its reach higher than even Air India.
But the strategy of rapid expansion through connecting previously unconnected areas eventually took its toll on Air Deccan’s margins because it couldn’t get sufficient passenger traffic. In retrospect, perhaps it was an idea ahead of its time.
In 2007, Vijay Mallya and his burgeoning Kingfisher Airlines came calling for a merger. When Mallya bought a controlling stake the following year, Air Deccan had 43 planes, 22 percent market share and 350 daily flights.
Given the obvious identity clash between simplicity and flamboyance, Gopinath had wanted the airlines to remain separate entities.
But Mallya went ahead and merged the two, turning Air Deccan into Kingfisher Red, the low-cost version of Kingfisher Airlines.
In the years that followed, the well-chronicled downfall of Mallya and his Kingfisher empire erased Air Deccan from the airspace altogether.
And while Gopinath flew under the radar in between contesting two Lok Sabha elections, he did not leave aviation.
Since 2009, his Bengaluru-headquartered company Deccan Charters has been providing charter services for tourism, medical purposes and corporate travel. With its fleet of four fixed-wing aircraft and 10 helicopters, it also been proving services to pilgrims in parts of Uttarkhand.
Now, almost a decade later, Air Deccan has returned to its roots.
“I have always said connectivity is key to growth and the hinterland of India deep in its bowels needs to be air linked to metros for equitable growth,” he told Mint.
Now 65, Gopinath is back, but he’s not trying to be bigger than ever. He has said that he would sidestep the established players and use smaller 18-seater planes for the regional connectivity venture. And this time he will have the comfort of government subsidies to aid his efforts.
Gopinath’s 2009 autobiography Simply Fly advertises the story of a man who went from riding a bullock cart in a remote Karnataka village to joining the army and retiring at the age of 28 to becoming an entrepreneur who founded India’s first low-cost airline. The next chapter is now officially in the works.
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