LOW-COST AIRLINES, 2003 - NO-FRILLS TAKES OFF

Air Deccan shattered the myth that flying was an elite pursuit. With no-frills service and ultra-low fares, it transformed Indian aviation, inspiring a booming budget airline segment

- BY AVISHKE G. DASTIDAR

In 2003, Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar Gopinath, a retired captain of the Indian Army, introduced Indians to what at first sounded like an oxymoron: low-cost airline. In the India of the 1990s and the early noughties, flying was the preserve of the well-heeled. The others took trains.

Gopinath imagined an India where airlines did just one job: transport people from one place to another without making a big deal out of it. Thus he started Air Deccan with a flight from Bangalore to Hubbali in Karnataka on August 25, 2003. It was a domestic carrier minus the meal service, plush seats and the sundry other bells and whistles that full-service carriers of the time, like Indian Airlines and Jet Airways, offered.