The Crowded Land and the Crowded Skies

I am going to take my first Kingfisher today. Kingfisher airlines I mean. Its supposedly unique in many ways

1. It doesnt have a class differentiation. All people travel by the kingfisher class. No business, no economy class. They treat you as one single class.
2. There is this nice small cute screen behind every seat. Looks good in the ads atleast, let me check out what they show.
3. They put their tickets for bidding in ebay and rediff. You can get a Bangalore-Mumbai ticket for 1800 bucks. A cheap ticket one month in advance will be around 2700 in any of the airlines.
4. Last but not the least. Its a pleasant sight for the eyes, seeing goody goody gals in red skirts, rather than the old and almost retired aunties in sarees.

If you have not been to Mumbai airport recently then you would be surprised by the "new done up Lounge" in the domestic terminal. The departure was complete when I was there last. I guess the arrival should be getting done now. It has got a really international look to it now.

A straight contrast would be the Bangalore airport. It is not even as big as the Indian Airlines office in Nariman Point. Tell you what, people complain that there is no space in Mumbai. They should check out the unoccupied office of the Air India-Indian Airlines in one of the costliest office spaces in the world. What a waste of resource.

Another very very interesting development has been the Mumbai HC Order on selling of the mill lands. My take on this is, why should the government (read mill owners) sell off the land to the big builders who make money selling it to the rich and the richer sections of the population. They can very well build a park, (like the central park in NY, I dont know how big it is, but lets make one) have rain water storage under them or have underground parking lots and stuff like that.

You create a new multi storey housing complex in the heart of Mumbai, the density of the population will shoot up like crazy and who will give them the other resources. It is exactly for the same reason that places like Navi Mumbai, Borivili and Thane have to be developed. New offices should come up in these areas so that the one way traffic in the mornings and evenings drop. It is because cities like Mumbai are crowded further with activities like these that say a city like Nagpur or Aurangabad do not develop the way they should be doing. Similar scenario in Bangalore. Develop Mysore and Mangalore, give them a better infrastructure.

Let me finish the post with our airline industry only. You have no idea how many airline companies are there in India now. Let me just list them

1. Indian Airlines - our own oldie
2. Jet airways - The largest private player
3. Sahara Air - Looking at selling part of its equity
4. Kingfisher - the new bold and beautiful airline
5. Air Deccan - decent enough, supposedly break even achieved in 1 st year of operation
6. Spice Jet - Delhi based airlies, little low profile
7. Paramount Airways - Started by a Coimbatore-Madurai group
8. Go air - they fly Mumbai-Goa for cheap
9. Air One - hopefully they should have a Bangalore-TVM flight

I am sure there are many more lined up like

• The one planned by the Cochin Airports authority. It is going to operate in the South Indian skies

Sites like Ghumo, Make my trip and rediff are making money trying to evade the part time air travel agents. Dunno what those guys are doing nowadays