Remember the sordid Twitter saga of badminton player P V Sindhu on the treatment meted out to her by IndiGo’s ground staff? Barely a week passed after the dust had settled on that incident when the low-cost airline landed itself in yet another snowballing controversy.

Source: PV Sindhu’s Twitter account

A video showing the airline’s ground staff beating a passenger surfaced causing a major uproar on social media. The incident that took place on October 15 at the Delhi Airport tarmac surfaced only recently and spread like wildfire. A passenger, after getting down from his flight, is seen waiting for his bus to the terminal, when he gets into an altercation with an airline ground staff as the latter asks him to be in line with airline protocol and not abuse the officials. The video goes on to show how the ground-staff doesn’t not let the passenger board the bus and is further manhandled by them.

Soon after the video went public, the backlash was immediate. The situation went out of control when news about the airline firing the whistleblower came out. IndiGo’s much delayed response added fuel to the fire. On Twitter, the #boycottIndiGo has been now trending for the last two days, while the stock price of IndiGo’s parent company, Interglobe Aviation Ltd, also tumbled as much as 5% on Wednesday.

To make the situation worse for IndiGo, other major airlines jumped into the fray to leverage some social media noise out of the saga. While Air India took a dig at Indigo by posting a creative that said – “Unbeatable service” – highlighting the ‘beat’ aspect, Jet Airways also took to releasing a creative that said – “We beat our competition, not you”. Adding to this crisis are innumerable jokes, memes and hashtags ranging from ‘#Indigoons’ to ‘#MeToo’.

Getting irate customers is not new to businesses in the service industry and incidents like these that majorly impact a brand’s reputation have happened every now and then. So, where exactly did IndiGo go wrong?

According to multiple reports, IndiGo had prior knowledge of the video. Taking a cue from the United Airlines incident, where the staff had forcibly removed a passenger from the flight by dragging him out, IndiGo should have taken preemptive measures. The Director of the airline, Aditya Ghosh, chose to break his silence on the issue only when the issue became big on social media. Had the brand owned up to its mistake proactively, the crisis probably wouldn’t have happened. Moreover, gauging the brand’s response on social media, it seems like they were completely out of touch with what was happening on social media and had no plan of action. For a company that is as marketing and social savvy as IndiGo, it brings up the question of whether the airline thought they would easily get away with it.

In the age of digital, brands can no longer afford to sit back and pray that their troubles will go away (How travel brands can prevent social-media goof ups). Had IndiGo placed a crisis response team on spot to deal with the backlash, the situation could have been handled better. Even now the customer support staff seems unprepared for the trolling that’s happening, with delayed to no response on most posts.

Source: Twitter

What IndiGo needs to do now is resolve the issue on priority, and then go back to the table and understand how to be better prepared for a situation like this in future. Brands tend to underestimate the enormity of a crisis. With social media, what ends up happening is that people who are not actively involved with the brand also start commenting on the issue, as it allows a platform to people to be a part of every crisis in the world and have an opinion about it.

In times of crisis like this, it is crucial for brands to stay on top of the issue by following up with regular, public updates. It’s important to reassure customers that they are the brand’s priority, but most importantly, it is vital to assess the underlying factors, implement a long-term solution and deliver a dignified closure to the issue.

We spoke to renowned brand consultant, Shubho Sengupta for his views regarding the controversy and how the sensitive travel industry can handle crisis situations in the future.

The post Indigo’s fiasco is a case study on how not to handle outrage against your brand appeared first on TravHQ.

After months of conversations around privatisation of Air India, the troubled flag carrier is about to be put on sale by the government. Until recently, it was being reported that Tata Group, the founding group of the airline, will be the key player looking at the deal but now IndiGo has joined the race. Operated by Interglobe Aviation, IndiGo is India’s biggest airline by market share.

The low cost carrier became the first airline to formally express interest in Air India. Holding a market share of over 41 percent, IndiGo is aggressive on expansion and is primarily interested in the international operations of Air India and its low cost airline Air India Express. Air India has 17 percent share in overseas passenger traffic which is the key attraction for IndiGo which has ambition to expand the list of international destinations it serves. IndiGo currently serves seven international destinations, all in Asia while Air India connects to 41 destinations in 28 countries across four continents.

With Air India also comes the market position and some of the privileges it has been enjoying, including primetime departure slots, real estate at airports, codeshare agreements and parking slots at major airports. However, with it will follow the mix of Airbus and Boeing fleet, something IndiGo has tried to avoid seriously until recently. In order to reduce operational overhead, IndiGo operates only the Airbus A320 family of aircraft and only recently converted part of its order from Airbus A320Neo planes to Airbus A321Neos. In addition to that, the carrier placed order for 50 ATR-72s for regional connectivity. These are indicators that the single aircraft strategy has been ditched to adapt to the market conditions.

The developments around the future of Air India have received mixed response and questions are being raised if this will be the right strategy for IndiGo. IndiGo stock saw sharp decline in Thursday and Friday’s trading. The loss of confidence is because of the massive debt Air India carries. It is under a debt of over INR 52,000 crore with about INR 28,000 crore in working capital debt and about INR 4,000 crore in interest and hasn’t turned profit in 10 years. Although the government has indicated that it would be willing to shave off some of it to make the deal attractive for a potential buyer, there is fear that the operational inefficiencies could be too deep to address which could create an overhang on the stock. Anand Mahindra, Chairman and MD, Mahindra Group recently commented on the mammoth task it would be to turn things around for Air India.

IndiGo President Aditya Ghosh, in a letter to employees, expressed that the leadership won’t embark on the journey if it isn’t profitable. He clarified that if there is a deal, there will be significant restructuring of operations and they won’t take up debt and liabilities that can’t be supported by new restructured operations. Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey had said IndiGo has written a letter with an unsolicited expression of interest in the divestment procedure.

Subscribe to our newsletter below to stay updated on how this development moves forward.

The post What is the way ahead for flag carrier Air India? appeared first on TravHQ.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation is planning to frame a set of rules to govern how airlines can deal with situations which require barring people from flying. This comes in the wake of recent incident involving assault of an Air India employee by a Member of Parliament prompting Air India and other popular carriers to ban him from flying. While airlines have the right to stop people from boarding if they can cause trouble during flight but that was an independent decision resting with the airlines. The Ministry is looking to add clarifications on what power rests with the carriers, what situations can trigger an action and what could be the duration of the ban.

During a recent parliament session, civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said that flight safety was top priority and such cases would not be tolerated. He also clarified that there can’t be an unequal approach to who is banned keeping safety issues in mind.

Riotous behaviour by travellers is a growing problem worldwide. IATA released a fact sheet about unruly passengers in December last year. The statistics collected by IATA very clearly indicate that it has become a significant problem. IATA collected 49,084 reports from airlines concerning unruly passengers between 2007 and 2015. The rate went up from 1 incident every 1,282 flights in 2014 to 1 incident every 1,205 flights in 2015. Most of the reports were of incidents that were verbal in nature but 11 percent of the reports related to incidents involving physical aggression. The statistics as you would expect, don’t cover all the airlines so in reality, things are much worse than what the numbers indicate.

Airlines certainly are sick of the menace some people create and creating a no-fly list looks like the right way forward. Being at the risk of getting into a no-fly list should also serve as a deterrent for many. However, it will be a long fight before it becomes a reality. Even beyond deciding the parameters for such a list, which will be a long debate in itself, the final call will be taken by government bodies where it is likely to turn from an action for better aviation into a political debate because of the trigger for this action being a high profile MP.

Implementation would also be a challenge. Plenty of incidents have been reported about individuals being caught in the system with US no-fly list because of their names matching people on the no fly list. This resulted in TSA introducing process for individuals affected by such situations. This problem scales up even further in India. A report by LiveMint quotes an airline official claiming that staff has been ordered to conduct hourly checks for any ticket booked under the name of MP in question. This works in case of high profile people on the list but how will the same be taken care of for others? Some of the IDs issued by government aren’t accepted by certain organisations, some others have been reported to be unreliable because of faulty processes, some haven’t been issued to all citizens and this weakens the possibility of a single baseline for the system.

We need a solution to improve the flying experience and make the life better for airline employees but that won’t be as easy as it appears to be. A lot of processes have to be taken care of before that.

The post Aviation ministry plans to draw rules for a no-fly list but it won’t be an easy affair appeared first on TravHQ.

Women are an essential element of society. They play a significant role in the upliftment of the human community and civilisation. Acknowledging their efforts in political and social fields over the years, International Women’s Day was first celebrated as a Socialist political event in 1909.

Celebrating the beauty and elegance of womanhood, International Women’s Day 2016 was celebrated in an awe-inspiring manner. Many travel brands launched woman-centric campaigns and activities that successfully grabbed the attention of the people not only nation-wide but world-wide. We have listed few of them below:

1) Probably, the world’s longest all-women flight ever!

To do a landmark historic event, Air India commendably ran a 17-hour flight that covered more than 8,000 miles.  According to the airline, this was world’s longest all-women operated and supported flight ever! It indicated the fact that every male dominated function can be carried out by women safely and efficiently.

2) #WomenWhoMakeUsFly

Vistara, an Indian airline based in Gurgaon, launched a social media campaign #WomenWhoMakeUsFly to showcase the extraordinary role their women employees play to make the airline fly. These employees have helped the brand scale new heights in reliability and service excellence within a very short time period. As a tribute, Vistara display picture on its Facebook page depicted many female employees. To commemorate further, it even operated all-women crew flights on the domestic network.

3) #GetawayGoddess

Cox and Kings’, a travel company headquartered in the UK, started #GetawayGoddess campaign on Twitter asking females about various reasons that stop them from exploring the world. Interestingly, it reached 30 lakh people generating over three crore impressions in just four hours. There were many destinations listed which displayed women-only tours. Cox and Kings’ also focused on the safety and comfort of the female travellers.

4) Jet Viva – Celebrating Womanhood

As a part of International Women’s Day 2016, Jet Airways has supported four non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on a range of women issues. It is carrying out its unique in-flight fundraising drive between 7^th March-21^st March on all domestic flights. Beyond this, Jet Airways flights 9W301/9W302 between Mumbai and Delhi and 9W361/9W362 between Delhi and Mumbai will be serviced by all-women cockpit and cabin crew. It also gave special discounts to women travellers.

5) #TravelWithHer

Stayzilla, an online platform that provides convenient and personalised stay experiences with a coverage of 30,000+ properties in 4000+ locations, initiated a travel campaign named ‘#TravelWithHer’. Females were asked to write travel stories about women who inspire them and how proud they feel being a woman. Stayzilla announced that the most popular stories will feature on its website.

Do let us know which one’s your favourite amongst the campaigns above.

The post Here’s how the travel industry celebrated Woman’s Day 2016 appeared first on TravHQ.