Saturday, June 18, 2005

Reuters: Indian airline IndiGo orders 100 Airbus jets!

jun 17th

this is certainly impressive. looks like there is a mad rush for aircraft for the indian market. all the action at the airshow seems to have come from india.

wonder what this will do to high-end, relatively high-margin train passenger traffic. maybe laloo's railways had better get their act together and make themselves more attractive to freight traffic. else it may find itself in the same boat as the american railroad system: limping along.

100 airbus jets! even with rakesh gangwal on board, that seems like irrational exuberance to me. where exactly are they going to find the pilots, for one thing? recently rono dutta, another veteran of air wars in the us, and now chief of sahara, had to cancel a bunch of flights because pilots defected en masse.

maybe in the next few years air travel will become much more rational and affordable. now it costs more to go to delhi from trivandrum than it does to go to singapore. once again, the dead hand of economic planning has distorted prices, skewed availability and generally screwed things up.

free market ki jai!

rajeev

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2005-06-16T130320Z_01_L16572097_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESS-TRANSPORT-AIRBUS-DC.XML

1 comment:

doubtinggaurav said...

Ahemm !!

Apologies for being a party pooper!
but as every economist worth his(her) salt has said previously
Where is the airport infrastructure
I am already anticipating bloodbath in Aviation market.
(As it is enough that our commie bhai will not allow privatization of airports)