Xpress Biz rebranding of Vista VIP shows Air India Express is pushing up revenue

Also Read: Air India Express wants to double market share in five years

All the aircraft it has currently inducted were meant for other carriers, mostly Chinese. The delayed ungrounding of these planes meant they were classified as “White Tails” and available at shorter notice for others, in this case, the Air India group. The resultant supply chain shortage has meant that Air India Express has taken delivery of the planes in the same configuration in which they existed – dual class. The planes come with different types of seats and materials, in line with what the original airline had planned to fit. In some cases, the plane has one row of business class seats (four) while some have two rows (eight seats).

Also Read: Air India Express completes Boeing 737 MAX inspection

Now that those planes were with Air India Express, in early December the airline announced Vista VIP fares where guests would enjoy these seats along with an increased baggage allowance of 40kg on international flights and 25 kg on domestic flights, hot meals and Xpress Ahead priority services at airports.

The rebranding and what does it mean?

In mid-March, the airline rebranded the Vista VIP as a “BIZ” class, treating it as a fare family along with Lite, Value and Flex. Essentially the frills have remained the same, which includes priority services meals and Business class seating. The baggage allowance has also remained the same as Vista VIP – 40 kg for international and 25 kg for domestic.

Also Read: Customer-facing parts of Air India-Vistara merger won’t change before 2025: AI CEO

Why the efforts on rebranding then? The airline is now more proactive in calling it Business class as compared to before, where they were treated as special seats. Does hybrid offering bode well for a low-cost carrier where the focus remains on ancillary and cheapest cost per seat? The decision could give a glimpse of many things. The airline group had initially decided to segregate the routes between LCC and FSCs but even the initial ones saw some changes later.

Positioning it as business class helps increase fares, from mere “Seats with frills”. Additionally, this positioning helps the airline go ahead with more and more codeshare routes with the same class of service. Currently, Air India does sell a lot of connections where one leg of the journey is on Air India Express and another on Air India. The Air India Express leg, where the dual-class aircraft is deployed, could ensure standardisation of service from a passenger perspective.

How are the others doing it?

SpiceJet took over 30 aircraft from erstwhile Jet Airways on lease after the fall of Jet Airways. These aircraft came with dual-class configuration. The airline did start selling Business class only to reconfigure the planes quickly and move them to mono class.

Akasa Air – also part of the “white tails” story, received some aircraft which were earlier destined for Jet Airways and came in dual class. The airline sells them branded as A++ which comes with additional frills but not a business-class product.

Tail Note

For a low-cost carrier where the focus remains on faster turnaround, a hybrid model goes against the very basics. With the fleet which is not standardised, it often creates operational headaches when it comes to swapping aircraft since there remains a mix of planes which are with business class and those without and then comes the case of routes where it operates one flight with this offering and another without.

These are early days for the Air India group. A full integration of AirAsia India with Air India Express is pending and no sooner than this moves, the next of Vistara with Air India will start. Coupled with the refurbishment of wide-body aircraft, the group has a lot on its plate for what is often dubbed as the “World’s greatest turnaround”. Will Air India Express go ahead with its plan of reconfiguration of planes in future or get buoyed by the success of Business class and continue the hybrid operations? Will it continue operating the A320 family, with the larger A321neos offering excellent cost-per-seat advantage or move to be an all-Boeing operator? Lastly, will it venture into long haul low cost similar to what Scoot is to Singapore Airlines? The answer to all of this could be a likely yes but too early to tell.

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Published: 27 Mar 2024, 06:31 PM IST