Will the Go First crash change the way Indians travel?

Kolkata: What we know for sure is that Go First owes banks in excess of Rs. 6,500 crores, which may have to be written off. What we do not know but can intelligently surmise is that this may lead to a dramatic change in traveller behaviour extending way beyond aviation.

But first, let’s stick to the flying facts first. We also know by now that the comeback of Jet Airways faces roadblocks, the NCLAT imbroglio even threatens to terminate the flight plan. SpiceJet is in constant turmoil and just recently, we read about external stakeholders seeking judicial intervention to affect solvency. The Air India combo and Indigo, the seemingly stable entities, already occupy around 80% of market share and we have the perfect setting for an imperfect oligopoly.

Truthfully, the distinctive preference for the twosome will come from customers directly, business and pleasure, who will be frightened to hedge their plans on operators who can shut overnite. Just to clarify, bankrupt airlines globally have a pattern of sudden closures and some recent infamous instances include Wow Air and Thomas Cook Airlines, the latter leading to a full-fledged rescue of stranded passengers. Tourists can lose significant money apart from the trauma of aborted vacations while business travellers have no patience for such chronic uncertainty. So, in spite of UDAN scheme and the sprinkling of ambitious small operators, sensible flyers will choose Indigo-Air India and this will certainly lead to unfriendly pricing.

At this point, I must invite you to witness two other experiential data points, on rail and roads respectively. Currently, India has clocked a tally of 4,000 kilometres in terms of expressways and this has doubled since 2021 - more than 20 new projects are underway and the rate of growth is destined to surpass Moore’s Law. The cars we drive nowadays are reliable and efficient while Uber Intercity is showing encouraging growth and thanks to the Volvo evolution, luxury coaches have come a long way from their video-coach predecessors. Some illustrative use cases will drive home this point further.

The driving time from Bangalore to Chennai can actually be in the range of four hours during the appropriate day parts while the time investment for catching a flight ( from home to destination address) is certainly not less than six-eight hours, factoring traffic, check-in times, luggage clearance and sundries. Once Delhi to Jaipur lives up consistently to its four-hour promise, the need for air travel will be suspect and the same pattern is true for many medium-haul routes today - the completed Mumbai-Delhi expressway may lead to further behaviour change. A certain section of corporate travellers will continue to fly, especially the domestic longer-haul sectors ( 90 minutes plus) but the leisure and trade traffic is scheduled to shift.

A fine accomplice for the expressway is actually the new-improved Indian Railways led by the marquee Vande Bharat carriages. More than 20 trains are already operating and an equivalent number is in the pipeline and the Howrah-Puri route, soon to be commissioned is an apt comparison. Flying to Puri via Bhubaneswar ( and then driving) will easily take a block time of 7 hours with a changeover en route and the Vande Bharat promises to achieve it in 6 hours, or maybe 6.5. Similar comparative points will certainly flare up across the country, the hero being the Railways or the Expressways, as per topography.

In aviation terms, the first casualty will surely be short to medium-haul travel and the 130-odd customer-facing airports in the country will soon be sharply segmented - the business destinations and destination tourism like Goa, Ladakh, Andamans, Srinagar etc. will show growth while a whole host of regional airports will soon be obsolete unless catering to 90 minute plus air distances. The Durgapur Airport ( Andal) or the Pune airport will not attract passengers from Kolkata or Mumbai respectively but will make sense for cross-country flights, traffic permitting. This will have a bearing on the equipment strategy of the two biggies and indeed the trajectory of the smaller guys as the Dorniers and Regional Jets may give way for the B737-A320 families, leading to uniformity in fleet patterns.

Interestingly, there will be a number of collateral beneficiaries in this process. If expressway traffic increases courtesy the well-heeled private travellers, cost recovery will certainly be quicker. Regional economies can act as highway pitstop magnets, with homestays, micro-local food and handicrafts being exposed to many in the dark - imagine the scalability of Lonavala Chikki, Murthal Paratha and Shaktigarh Langhcha equivalents. On a softer note, socio-cultural empathy will increase amongst urbanites, unlike the synthetic templatized airport environments and this may well be the growth spurt for Electric Vehicles, as long as charging infrastructure is secured. Incidentally, France just became the first European nation to ban domestic short-haul flights for environmental reasons, thus making car and train the default options. It is not too tormenting to imagine a similar scenario in the ‘intra’ Delhi-Jaipur-Agra circuit, the alternate infrastructure almost in place.

At times over time, the success or failure of a seemingly stand-alone brand can have long-term implications and one does suspect that the Go First meltdown, in the context of correlated events, can be one such. Indians blessed with the means and habit to fly, cultivated lovingly over twenty overs, may soon indulge in a dramatic role reversal. The comeback of road and rail is clearly a progressive step in many ways and this is not destined to change in a hurry.