Mumbai: A survey by online portal Expedia reveals that fewer Indian travellers don’t opt for a low cost carrier for medium to long haul trips. However, over 41% of participants said they would consider a LCC for flight of upto three hours duration.
The Expedia LCC Airline Index polled 3200 air travellers in Asia Pacific including India.
Low cost airlines led by IndiGo account for nearly 55% of market share in domestic market. On the international routes Indian LCCs cater to Gulf region and Bangkok with flight time of less than four hours.
The report reveals that about 41% of Indian travelers would consider a LCC for a flight time of up to three hours. For a flight approaching 5 hours, that figure drops to 27%, and tumbles thereafter. Only 9% of Indian travelers would fly a LCC for an 8 hour flight and only 2% would consider a LCC for a 16 hour flight, the report said.
About 91% Indian travellers are willing to make concessions to save and Indian travellers are most willing to sacrifice in-flight entertainment (58%), full meal service (50%), pillows and blankets (45%), seat selection (46%) and snacks and beverages (43%) but are least willing to sacrifice bathroom privileges (18%), legroom (19%) and free checked luggage (23%).
Vikram Malhi, Managing Director-Asia, Expedia said, “Despite being a highly cost sensitive market, Indians are one of the least willing to accept slightly lower level of customer service to save money on flights. The general thought behind flying a LCC is to replace their train tickets with a faster mode of travel or a trip with large number of people that could be friends or family.”
“A trend that we have seen with Indians is that some of them are choosing to fly LCCs and then using the money saved to upgrade their hotel/s for the trip”, he added
The survey also reveals that Indians rank third in Asia behind Koreans and Taiwanese in booking hotels and air tickets together and prefer flying in low cost airline
