The airlines industry’s biggest enemy is back again. During the past 12 months, Brent crude price has jumped 54.22% to $76.86 a barrel, while jet fuel prices have risen more than 28%. During the same period, the rupee weakened 3.85% against the dollar.

This has prompted most airlines to raise flight ticket prices, cut non-fuel costs and boost non-aeronautical revenue to offset the impact of rising fuel costs and a weakening rupee. IndiGo (Interglobe Aviation Ltd) was the first to hike flight fares by levying a fuel surcharge of as much as ₹400 on domestic routes from 30 May to offset higher costs.

SpiceJet is also planning to diversify its activities beyond “pure aviation” to protect itself from the high risks associated with the aviation sector, and will soon announce forays into a dedicated freight business in cargo and courier logistics. This could be a first for an Indian airline.The airline also plans to develop digital aviation and travel products. They are both likely to be in collaboration with international partners.

“We believe that we must hedge ourselves from the risk of being in a pure aviation business and find businesses which are connected to aviation but which could be a little more insulated from the high cost of fuel,” said SpiceJet co-founder and CEO Ajay Singh in a statement, adding, “so we are looking at some new areas.”

Jet Airways is seeing worse. The reports of full-service carrier’s grounding in the next 60 days owing to severe resource crunch have stirred the aviation sector. The airline has refuted the reports but the speculations are flying thick and fast. Some reports also suggested that Jet has asked employees to take salary cut of between 5 and 25 per cent to slash operating expenses.

The problem with these airlines is no different from the rest of the industry. American Airlines CEO Doug Parker offered a warning to the flying public – fuel costs are skyrocketing and that extra cost will be passed onto the consumer with more expensive ticket prices. Fuel constitutes 35-50% of an airline’s total costs. Airlines in India also make payments in dollars for salaries of expatriates, for maintenance and overhaul, purchase of new aircraft and for buying jet fuel. However, with India being a price-sensitive market in the commercial aviation segment, airlines often struggle to pass on costs to customers.

According to the fifth annual Global Travel Forecast, published by GBTA and CWT with the support of the Carlson Family Foundation, Asia Pacific expects to see a 3.2% rise in 2019 pricing. Chinese demand remains high and by 2020 the country is expected to become the world’s biggest air travel market. In 2019 the country’s flights are seen going up 3.9%.

But China will not be alone. The vast majority of countries in the region will see price rises, especially in markets like New Zealand (7.5%) and India (7.3%). The latter is expected to be the world’s third largest aviation market by 2025, with airports operating beyond capacity. The only exception in this booming region is Japan. Prices there will likely drop 3.9% due to the country’s added capacity in preparation for the Olympic Games in 2020.

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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.

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Honeywell has been selected by India’s Jet Airways to provide its GoDirect Fuel Efficiency software, a part of the GoDirect Flight Services family of Connected Aircraft technologies, to reduce fuel use and costs for the airline. The offering provides a full range of data analysis, reporting and monitoring tools for enhanced fuel conservation.

Honeywell’s GoDirect Fuel Efficiency software analyses data from more than 100 reports that integrate with existing airline systems through a user-friendly data interface. The service offers fuel-saving recommendations, which airlines can quickly deploy into existing or customized analytics reports and dashboards. Honeywell’s technology will also help lower carbon emissions from international flights, in accordance with recent changes to the Paris Agreement on reducing greenhouse gases. Existing users of the software have reported fuel savings of more than 2 percent annually.

“Typically, fuel consumption accounts for as much as 20 to 40 percent of an airline’s operating costs,” said Jason Wissink, senior sales director, Connectivity Services, Honeywell Aerospace. “Flight efficiency services are an important part of the global aviation industry, helping airlines reduce costs significantly and help regulate emissions, which India has committed to reducing. Our GoDirect Fuel Efficiency software is flexible enough to integrate with Jet Airways’ existing aircraft systems, enabling fast deployment and the ability to support fleet growth.”

Jet Airways joins an expanding list of global customers already using this innovative software, including Etihad Airways, Finnair, Japan Airlines and Turkish Airlines. More details about Honeywell GoDirect fuel efficiency software can be found here.

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It pays to be a loyal customer and in the end you won’t mind being a member of JetPrivilege, if the airline keeps making subtle innovations such as the recently introduced JetScreen, the new wireless streaming in-flight entertainment service. This services also demonstrates that Jet Airways does have a plan or two for the smartphone savvy millennials in the country.

The recently introduced service allows customers to stream video content, movies, shows and much more on their personal Wi-Fi enabled smartphone devices. The content consists of Bollywood/Hollywood and regional movies, games etc. The remote streaming also has standard in-flight entertainment features such as 3D flight tracking and access information etc.

The features of this service seem to be the tip of the ice-berg as Jet Airways sees this as the initial step before offering “fully-fledged, broadband-enabled Wi-Fi connectivity”, which will give passengers the ability to browse the internet, send and receive email, access connecting flight information and more.

What’s available? 

• Standard in-flight entertainment features (3D tracking, movies, games etc.)
• Over 220 hours of content to begin with
• BYOD Model (Bring Your Own Device Model)
• Accessible via AirPlane mode

What seems to be missing?

• Cost implications are not clear
• Availability on limited routes as of now

To access streaming content on personal devices, flyers need to download the free ‘Airtime Player’ app which is available on the App Store and Play Store. Once they have boarded the flight, all they need to do is connect to “JetScreen” Wi-Fi in airplane mode.

Gaurang Shetty, whole-time Director, Jet Airways, says, “Inflight entertainment is a key element of Jet Airways’ full-service experience. Our selection of the best entertainment content across genres is aimed at enriching the inflight experience of our guests. Streaming of content on personal devices has become extremely popular globally, and we are confident that this initiative, will appeal to all our guests especially the millennials who prefer to access content on the move.”

For more details on how to experience, JetScreen visit this link.

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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.

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Around a month back, the videos of popular Hindi singer Sonu Nigam’s impromptu performance in a flight were doing rounds of the internet. The flight in question was a Jet Airways flight and as reports suggest, he performed a couple of songs on the flight announcement system on the request of fellow passengers. The flight was going from Jodhpur, where the singer performed for a private event, to Mumbai. The videos gained millions of views in no time and were shared all over.

(Image: Boeing 777 by infokus/ CC BY 2.0)

However this hasn’t gone down very well with Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and they have directed Jet Airways to suspend the cabin crew involved. The advice has been issued for the misuse of flight communication systems. Jet Airways has issued a statement saying that the crew has been taken off duty for enquiry and training so that they strictly adhere to procedures. All the five cabin crew have been taken off duty.

The singer has called the move to be an act out of the lack of common sense and criticised it.

This act of lack of common sense, according to me, is the real intolerance: Sonu Nigam

— ANI (@ANI_news) February 5, 2016

Other people are also supporting Sonu Nigam’s statement.

Crew should've taken permission frm management bt such impromptu activities take place worldwide:Harshvardhan, Aviation expert on Sonu Nigam

— ANI (@ANI_news) February 5, 2016

If at all… these hostesses should have gotten a raise. Life cannot be so stiff -thoda chill karo yaar. https://t.co/5F8SeTuz7S

— Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) February 5, 2016

On the other hand, Jet Airways is being target on social media by masses on their update about the incident.

What do you think of this action by DGCA? Were they right in asking Jet Airways to suspend the staff or do they need to loosen up a bit on this?

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Jet Airways, the second largest airline in India, has announced the introduction of WiFi-based in-flight entertainment streaming service on the Boeing 737 Next Generation aircraft. This exclusive service will be starting from the second quarter of 2016, thereby allowing passengers to watch TV programmes and movies on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.

The airline has initiated this Wi-Fi service in collaboration with Global Eagle Entertainment Inc – a leading worldwide provider of in-flight entertainment, media content, technology and connectivity solutions. Consequently, Jet Airways plans to upgrade from a streaming service to a full broadband satellite connectivity which allows flyers to use the internet, check e-mails, browse through social media, send instant messages and obtain real-time travel services and destination deals when they are mid-air. These wireless services will be introduced in phases. It will enhance the travellers experience as high-quality entertainment content will be available to them.

Commenting on the development, Gaurang Shetty, Senior Vice-President – Commercial, Jet Airways, quoted:

“Jet Airways has constantly innovated to adopt new age technologies to enhance the guest experience. This best-in-class, customer-focused initiative will provide superior entertainment and communication options to guests and we are confident it will set new benchmarks by delivering high quality, global entertainment content to guests’ personal devices.”

Wale Adepoju, Chief Commercial Officer of GEE, said:

“GEE is honoured to expand our long-term partnership with Jet Airways, an innovative airline keenly focused on elevating the guest experience and a true leader across the exciting Asian region. By deploying GEE’s AIRTIME IFE streaming solution across its growing fleet, Jet Airways can deliver a broad range of entertainment content to passenger’s personal devices with an eye on full blown satellite connectivity aboard future flights.”

At the global level, many commercial airlines provide Wi-Fi service to their travellers like Lufthansa Airlines, US Airways, Turkish Airlines and Singapore Airlines. The cost of using the Wi-Fi service is higher in most of them.

As Jet Airways starts rolling out the service in phases, we might see other carriers join them. This is already quite popular in Europe and international carriers in India are also offering the service.

Also Read: Jet Airways launches a new app exclusively for Apple Watch

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Jet Airways, the second largest airline in India, has recently announced that Cramer Ball has resigned as the chief executive officer of the company. He will be pursuing a new opportunity in Europe for family reasons. The resignation will be effective from February 29, 2016.

(Image: Jet Airways by Rick Schlamp/ CC BY 2.0)

Mr. Cramer Ball has almost two decades of senior level experience in the aviation industry. He has held senior and prominent positions in international airlines like Etihad Airways and Gulf Air. His commendable performance in the major restructuring programme of Air Seychelles returned the airline to profitability.

In his absence, Gaurang Shetty, the Senior Vice President – Commercial, will become the acting CEO of Jet Airways. He has been responsible for all commercial activities connected to in-flight services & customer services for both domestic and international operations of the brand. The airline said that he will now head the Operating Committee in managing the daily operations, under the control of the Board of Directors, chaired by Naresh Goyal – the founder of the airline company.

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Jet Airways, the second largest Indian airline based in Mumbai, has unveiled an app developed exclusively for Apple Watch to allow passengers access travel information seamlessly on their wrists.

The application with watchOS 2 support will offer real-time information on the status of any flight, plus receive alerts for the upcoming trips and updates on special deals and offers. It has user-friendly features for a convenient, personalised and smooth travel experience.

It displays a convenient option for the travellers to check their flight status on the day of departure. The users can obtain this information by entering the flight number on the keypad of the watch. For more details, they can click ‘More on iPhone’ option.

Gaurang Shetty, the director of Jet Airways, quoted:

“At Jet Airways we constantly endeavour to be in step with evolving developments in technology and communication to enhance guest experience across touch points. The Jet Airways app for Apple Watch incorporates latest trends in user experience design, personalisation and technology to provide a unique experience and access to relevant travel information on the go. The app symbolises our continued commitment to our customer focused ‘Guest First’ service philosophy, which is at the core of our business.”

To access it, the users will have to download the application for the iPhone and switch on the ‘Show App on Apple Watch’ option within the ‘My Watch’ tab.

For more details and downloading the app click here.

Also Read: Apple Watch is out in India, don’t forget to read this before you buy

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