Low cost airline: The 'feel' of India's growth

It's always great to be in the thick of things, to witness all the changes around. Low cost airline is one such example.

With our term break during December, a lot of us were planning to book rail/air tickets. Being from Coimbatore, I used to be in a really pathetic situation whenever there was a vacation. Both the ‘from’ and ‘to’ cities in my case aren’t metros, and Indore is badly connected to the South. I used to travel in a car from Indore to Bhopal first, then in trains from Bhopal to Chennai, and then to Coimbatore. To cut it short: I used to spend two days and three nights in shabby, battered and extremely poorly maintained train coaches, and reach home the morning of the third day. Journey alone used to cost half of my vacation.

The only other option was to take a flight first to Mumbai and then to Coimbatore in either Jet Airways or IA, both of which would end up costing something around 9-10K one-way, which isn't exactly the best option if you are a student.

Somewhere during this mayhem, Air Deccan started its operations from Mumbai to Coimbatore. I was elated, but still couldn't use the service because the timings didn't work out. Paramount Air started later, but again I couldn’t make use of the service since Mumbai wasn’t in their hit-list. Nonetheless, Air Deccan provided an alternative of traveling from Mumbai to Bangalore. This way, I'd travel from Indore to Mumbai and Bangalore to Coimbatore in some decent buses, with Air Deccan fitting in between, cutting a day and a night in the process. For some reason (or laziness?), I couldn't complete the Air Deccan part of the booking till today, and was just about to do it tomorrow.

It was at this point that I read the article today about Go Air starting its operations between Coimbatore and Mumbai, and surprisingly, timings are perfect. How elated I am! Now all I have to do is travel to Mumbai in a decent bus and then take this carrier, saving 1 day and 2 nights in the process. Their website isn’t exactly polished – not everything is where it’s supposed to be, and information is not easy to find – but I guess I have a decent amount of time to make a manual/internet booking.

Amazing stuff - made all the more amazing since I’m about to experience the *difference*. It’s like we didn’t know anything about computers till schooling and was suddenly struck by the beauty of computers, virtual games and the internet. Boy, didn’t we enjoy every bit of it? But I’ve seen some college and school kids-of-today say: What’s so special about internet? I always feel like saying “You have no idea kiddo!”