Captain Gopinath, the pioneer of low-cost aviation model in India, is known to be a straight talker. In an interview with Raghuvir Badrinath of Business Standard he talked about about Vijay Mallya’s recent decision to ground the low-cost service offering of Kingfisher Airlines.

Mallya, chairman and managing director, Kingfisher Airlines, entered the low-cost aviation business when he acquired Capt Gopinath’s Air Deccan during 2007 in a $300-million deal. Following this, Mallya merged the two airlines and then rebranded Air Deccan as Kingfisher Red to offer low-cost service in addition to the full service offering.

“It is probably a good decision by Mallya to have one brand now. But I would have probably said that he should have made all the domestic service as low-cost offering and all international as full service,” said Gopinath, late on Saturday evening at his sprawling bungalow, just yards away from Mallya’s home in Bangalore. 

According to Gopinath, having almost a similar looking brand and then when the offerings are just a little bit different there are bound to have been problems. “And that is what happened. You just cannibilise your existing customer base. When companies were merged and almost a single branding came in to existence, it was sort of a double whammy for Kingfisher. First, the economy passengers of Kingfisher started to look at Kingfisher Red as the offerings were almost same while the price was cost effective. And when Mallya decided to raise the fares of Kingfisher Red, customers switched over to other LCCs such as Indigo or Spicejet,” Gopinath said.

Mallya, according to Gopinath, took one more wrong decision. “He felt that Air Deccan was a step child. I told him that they are his two children and should be treated equally. Post the merger, whenever there was a Air Deccan and Kingfisher flight at almost the same time slots, a decision was taken to do away with the Air Deccan flight in a hope that the passengers will graduate to Kingfisher full service. But just the opposite happened. They went to other LCCs,” Gopinath said.

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