Airlines must learn

The recent event of inhuman treatment of a passenger and his wife who were offloaded from a United Airlines flight in the US may serve as a very good lesson to the global airline industry. The Indian experience in this particular aspect of flying is reportedly far better than international practices that allow cavalier overbooking of flights on the grounds that cancellations will always take care of the additional seats sold. In fact, the Indigo Airlines model of a reservation system that does not allow overbooking of flights is to be highly recommended. The figures of overbooking in India are less — about 15,000 in 2016 against an estimated 10 crore fliers — but then the number of fliers in a year in India is also far less than in the US or Europe. The experience of the offloaded passengers on United could have been the stuff of a horror movie. But then you would expect it of an extremely competitive business environment.

The issue is further clouded by overtones of racism as somehow an Asian couple was conveniently picked out of more than 100 passengers. To make matters worse, the airline was refusing to apologise and then grovelled only after social media outrage caused such havoc as to take close to a billion off the stock value. This was one instance of the social media bringing about an agreeable outcome in punishing the airline for its lack of concern for passengers.