There may be no food on some AI flights, even if you're willing to pay

London: Air India is planning to go one up on competitors looking to cut costs.

As Low Cost Carriers (LCCs) look to cut corners (many have begun charging even for insignificant services like e-ticket printouts and increased cancellation charges significantly) Air India may pull the rug from under their feet by not loading any food at all on some of its flights.

Evenpassengers willing to pay extra will notbe able to buy food on these flights.

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A senior airline official told Firstpost that for domestic flights which are less than an hour in duration, the airline may decide to not load any food at all.

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“We want to be the trend setters here. No food means aircraft weight is less and aircraft turnaround time is faster. Or in other words we can get an incoming aircraft ready faster for an onward flight,” this official said. He said a final decision on this would be taken soon.

Till now, AI has not followed the LCCs and does not charge extra for meals on any of its domestic flights. A few months back, it quietly swapped hot meals with cold meals (sandwiches etc) on some flights which areless than 90 minutes long, in a bid to reduce costs.

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But if the airline does manage to operate flights without any food on board, it may set the cat among pigeons and force the extremely cost conscious LCC competitors to follow suit. At present, low cost carriers such as Indigo, Spicejet, and GoAir offer meals on payment.

Besides tweaking its meals-on-board policy, Air India is also awaiting clarity from the Civil Aviation Ministry before outlining its policy on charges for preferred seats.

After several flip-flops, the ministry is now mulling a cap on the number of seats an airline can charge extra for- and this could be limited to just a dozen seats on domestic flights. When the policy was announced initially, airlines like IndiGo and Air India Express began charging foralmost all seats, upsetting flyers and leading to a review of the policy.

Aviation regulator DGCA is now believed to be working on new guidelines under which either 15 percent of total seats on a flight or 12 seats in all will be chargeable.

Air India has already ruffled competition by slashing itsfree baggage allowance on Gulf routes to 30 kg from 40 kg earlier. “Within 24 hours of our cutting this allowance, Emirates increased it to 50 kg. But we are not reversing this,” the official quoted above said. The airlines has already reduced baggage allowance on domestic flights to 15 kg from the previous 20 kg limit.

Capacity addition

Air India plans to add 22 percent capacity this fiscal, most of which will be released on international routes. The airline has already re inducted 6 dreamliners, 8 more are expected to comein by December. Air India re launched commercial operations of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner on 15 May on select domestic routes while international operations started on 22 May.

The eight new Dreamliners would be used to launch services on the Delhi-Birmingham-Delhi and Delhi-Sydney-Melbourne-Delhi routes in August this year and the Delhi-Rome-Milan-Delhi route. These services will start in October.