Why Air Travel Isn't Hassle-Free In India With Rajesh Vetcha

In this conversation, journalist Puja Mehra speaks to Rajesh Vetcha, who has been a journalist and worked on road and aviation infrastructure projects, about airports, how they are run, how the systems that allow for the functioning of airports work, passenger charters and much more.

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TRANSCRIPT

Puja Mehra: Hi Rajesh. Thank you for coming to the podcast. You and I have talked about airports and aviation for so many years, since the time Delhi airport was being privatised. And all along you've told me all these insightful stories that as a passenger, I wouldn't ever get to know, which helps me understand what goes on in the running of airports.
Rajesh Vetcha: Airports are very, very complex structures in terms of operations, safety, the purpose, the number of stakeholders. So it's a very challenging atmosphere. It's also interesting that it's the fastest mode of transport. That is aviation. Airlines, air transportation, the easiest. The complexities behind it are huge, and it involves various stakeholders.
For people like us, who we always imagined about western things like that, books by Arthur Hailey were a very, very good insight. It can be the Hotel, it can be the Airport. And I still remember that book by Arthur Hailey, how it starts with the airport general manager, Mel Bakersfeld… what happens on a very interesting day where there’s a massive snowstorm and what brings a hold on the airport operation and how it leads to runway closures. The book vividly describes every single aspect of the airport, which, as a common man wouldn't know. You look at yourself as just a flyer; you think that the airport is a place where you go and check in your baggage and you fly, and then you reach your destination. But the airports are a very, very complex gridlock of networks. And that book describes beautifully what happens when a snowstorm comes, how the airport operations are closed, what happens to a departing airline, what happens to an incoming airline, and then the chaos results in the wrong side of a runway. Then the emergency services are in place, and what happens meanwhile to the passengers? What happens to your baggage? Every single aspect of the airport operations is covered so beautifully.

PM: Anybody, Rajesh, who's read this book or watched the film Terminal, it completely changes your perception of airports, because most of us, we are in a hurry, we are rushing to the airport, we get into a flight, we get off, and the entire focus is on the purpose of the trip being undertaken. But the life of the airport itself, what all goes into making sure that we are able to make that journey, comes through very vividly in both this book and as you're saying, all these films, especially Tom Hanks in Terminal…
RV: All this kind of dates back to the Second World War, wherein after the Second World War, the entire tiredness out of having the war. So the defence industry, and you had a robust aviation industry, which was more defence oriented. And suddenly they realised we have so much research technology, we can't use it for defence. But probably that's when the civil aviation boom started. The onset of the jet age kind of completely changed this market.
So all these airports which you had in many of the places had very little to do with civil aviation, probably they were for defence, for other purposes, and it was still not affordable. So as the boom happened in civil aviation, then, for example, JFK, one terminal got full, then they constructed another terminal that got full, another terminal that got full, another terminal, and it came to eight terminals. So it created a lot of inefficiencies in the system wherein, like, for example, you wanted to have, say, Starbucks, and they tell you that you go to Terminal 3; if you want to eat at McDonalds, go to Terminal 5. If you want to go to some other place, go to Terminal 8. So it's a lot of confusion. So all these things, which have happened in Europe and America, kind of changed the way I would say it…. probably. I would give the credit first to the Hongkong airport, which came in the 90s. They had to move out of Kowloon due to the congestion, wherein they decided that we'll have a single terminal, wherein domestic, international, it's seamless. And Hong Kong also had a space constraint. It was an island. So they did this very well in terms of how HongKong did it. And that became the model in which the rest of the airports that came in, it can be Malaysia, it can be Singapore, started working on it, Dubai, then Delhi. You had a whole range of airports, including now European airports, started seeing how they can integrate terminals.

The concept of airport cities which have come is: you're creating cities around the airport, logistic parks and all that. So I'm sure you have been to Amsterdam. The airport is one, but the entire area around Amsterdam airport, you know, it's got the largest flower auction center; then you have the banking hub. You have so many other things which have added to you. So the airport itself has become a city. Like earlier ports created a lot of development around seaports, but now airports are becoming very big. So each city in India has the potential or anything to do about…

I’ll give you a great example, I would say, is that of the Fedex hub. So FedEx is one of the biggest logistics for different people. It means different things. The courier company, logistics company, Fedex has got its hub in Memphis. So it's been there for quite some time now, probably 30 - 40 years. That is the base airport for most of Fedex's flights there in the US. The Fedex hub in Memphis will probably have anything between 300 to 400 movements in a day. Delhi is probably around 1000, if I'm not wrong, I just need to kind of reconfirm it. But yeah, it's around 1000 movements, I think so, if I'm not wrong. So one movement is one landing, one movement is a takeoff. So it means 500 flights have landed and 500 flights have departed. That's how it is. Why I'm narrating the example of Fedex is how it's been created as a cargo hub. New York could have been a big cargo hub, or Chicago could have been a big cargo hub. But very clearly and cleverly, I would say the Federal, FAA, the cities all work together— Let's create a hub somewhere where the land is cheap. And then they have created such big logistics centers. Like for example, today, say, Walmart. It's got such a big logistics hub that today any part of USA certainly requires something from Walmart. It can be taken off from the Fedex hub. There is a cornea eye bank, which is there…. In Fedex hub; there is something known as a blood testing lab—-so blood samples across the USA get flown to Memphis, they get tested and the results come out. There are other kinds of hardware repair centers. So it’s created employment. It's created so many other opportunities. And what is also interesting is they do have commercial flights, but for a change, when you go to that, if it's four Fedex flights are taking off, probably it'd be one commercial flight. So it's a very interesting thing which created employment. Build this entire thing.

PM: Rajesh, what you're saying is that instead of creating a logistics facility in the already congested New York airport, JFK or something, or in Chicago, what has happened in the US is that, for instance, Fedex has come together with the city authorities, with airlines, with something like Walmart or other companies that need goods and services to be flown across the country, all of them have come together and they have set up a FeD in this particular place. And how it operates is that instead of like flying, for instance, human organs that need to be in emergency delivered to hospitals, instead of these being flown through crisscross journeys across the country, they can simply be done from one particular hub that has been created with the sole purpose of keeping costs low and movement efficient. And it has been done in a place where real estate cost itself was low. So they have resisted the temptation of doing it in New York or Chicago.
RV: It’s 100% right. You should explore airports like Nagpur, central India and other places. You kind of disperse logistics centers to those places, incentivize those areas for growth, not make the real estate more expensive in the cities, not make it more congested. Government was telling about there are some 140 airports. So the recent development of airports is, if you look at smaller airports, they've constructed a terminal building, probably made a runway operation. But what is critical is these airports, if they have to survive, you need to have airlines coming in. So if airlines have to come in, you need to create the market for that. The city has to play a role, the state government has to play a role to make it attractive.
So towards this, what they have done is generally airports are always look at the bigger airports which have traffic are profitable and all that... But even now, recently airports, the Tier2 airports, they have Mangalore and all these are not very profitable. I don't know how it's going to work. So the government needs to come out with a different model wherein the city is also investing in it. Probably the airline invests in it. For example, a lot of hubs in the USA or in Europe, the airline actually invests in the airport and they have access to parking. The pricing is determined by the regulator.

PM: You want to start by telling me how the deregulation process started and where it went wrong,
RV: The 1991 liberalisation. I would say that's a very key milestone even for the aviation sector, for two reasons.
First and foremost was that the airlines were deregulated earlier. You just had Air India and Indian Airlines and Vayu Dhoot, which was again a government subsidiary. But then they agreed to allow the private sector to come into this play. And 90s with the liberalization, air travel boomed, mainly business travel and international travel boomed. So many airlines actually started and many went bust also. Just for your information, I think in the last 30 years, close to 23 airlines, if I'm not wrong, have gone bust.

PM: What is it about the deregulation process that didn't allow these airlines to survive?
RV: The entire airline structure has got a lot of fixed variables. First is the leasing cost, the aviation fuel cost, the maintenance cost, and then other operational costs. So the first thing of the cost of the aircraft and the cost of aviation turbine fuel are literally out of the hands. So we don't have adequate structures to ease the cost of aircraft leasing and can come into India. How other countries do is they have their own aircraft leasing companies and they can do it and becomes easier. Unfortunately, India has not got. So that's where you have a lot of holding companies.

PM: What's the reason for this structure?
RV: It is policy related, government's reluctance to allow a lot of easier way of investment coming in certain things, all the aircraft worldwide are leased by the companies or the sovereign governments. So once they have leased, they have the first rights.
I mean, just to give you an example, in the case of China, the chinese government has brought out a company which will lease aircraft from overseas and sublease it to the airlines to reduce costs and improve reliability in every other aspect. So that's been done with regard to airlines. With regard to airports… 2006, when Delhi airport was privatized and so was Mumbai, that they came out with the T3… and then operational efficiency, everything improved.

PM: Every time we buy a ticket, the ticket says that for a hassle free airport experience, arrive two and a half hours early at the airport and with that ticket we enter the airport two and a half hours before flying time. From that point on, for most of us, the experience is anything but hassle free, especially if …..You live in Hyderabad, you're right now in Hyderabad, one of the best airports in the country. But for those of us who especially winter months we travel using Delhi airport, this year's chaos was tremendous. But every year it's not exactly a hassle free experience. So what goes on? Why are we not able to give air passengers the experience that international airports where I've seen sometimes planes are taking off every 15 seconds in -30 degrees celsius?
Toronto, for instance, blizzard conditions, completely unaffected operations. But why are we not able to do that in India?
RV: The challenge of Mumbai and Delhi was that they were brown field and then you had to kind of expand wherever it is. So I would definitely give a lot of credit to what happened in Hyderabad and now subsequently what Bangalore has been doing. The new airport at Goa is also very interesting. So they have taken a very long term perspective on how to kind of do things, expand, still give the passenger as much as possible the best experience. They have a 30 year or 40 year master plan to handle this entire process, which is great. But as I told you, this induced demand, you increase the airport, the passenger traffic increases. Like for example, Hyderabad is 22 million. Now they've done a new expansion for 40 million, 35 whatever million they had done it. Once it comes to 35 to 40 million, they have to do another terminal.

You mentioned the ticket. See if you are today to buy a train ticket. It's very simple. You buy the ticket. The ticket is on the IRCTC platform. You go there. The station is owned by the Indian Railways. The train is operated by the Indian Railways. The catering is done by a subsidiary of the Indian Railways. And then you go reach your destination. That's also Indian Railways. So everything is same is the case with bus. If you're buying a government bus ticket or a normal bus ticket. Suppose if you were to buy with XYZ travels you go to the ISBT and then you can board the bus somewhere nearby and you reach your destination. So here everything is in the hands of a single entity or probably a couple of entities. But the airport situation is very different.
The first and foremost factor in aviation is, if you see it's perhaps the industry in the world, the industry I would say where all your norms are standardized and there's a continuous emphasis on safety. So in aviation it's either 100% safety or nothing because we have seen in the past that if there is something wrong in the flight it has always resulted in the death of all the passengers or things like that. And it's been very rare that few people have survived. So what happens in this entire system is because of this standardization— So everybody speaks the same language. If you're a pilot, the same process. Your aircraft is in Hyderabad, you land in Timbuktu, you land in Singapore. Everything is the same process. So this has been largely given by the ICO- International Civil Aviation Organization and then of course the airline, the companies which make these aircraft. So there are standard protocols. So that's the first one.

You know there are gridlock of networks. So it's not as simple as what you think. For example, let's start with the ticket. Say imagine you purchased a ticket from say Delhi to New York. So you're buying this ticket say from Make my Trip or something like that. But then again it goes to the airline. So that is the first network you're getting into, the airline network. So airlines have their software where they're fulfilling the ticket and all those things. And now you take that and you go to the airport. The first step of halt is that of the CISF guy who checks. So you’re getting into the security network of the airport. You caught into the cameras things like that. And then once you enter that, you are now in the airport system.

What happens in the airport system is you stand in the queue to kind of check in your baggage. Here the hardware, software is all provided by the airport network. But then once the ticket is checked in, it's an interface of the airline, the airport network, because the airport needs to keep a track of the passengers and what really happens is that now you become part of the airport system and the next step, having checked in, you will go to the immigration. So now the immigration network comes into place. So the immigration network is handled by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Sometimes a few local police can be deputed and in the smaller airports, which are international, say a place like say Vijaywada or some other place, there's a chance that the local police will be handling it, but under the supervision of the Ministry of Home Affairs. So now we have had an airline network, then you have the security network, you have the airport network. Now we are coming to the network of the Home Affairs. So though the home affairs network is their own thing and data is there in that. So you need to go through these processes. Then you come to the customs. So the customs guys, what they do is the airlines give them a manifest. And so now you get into the customs network. So once that is over, you have your security check in again.
Sorry, you had a security check in and you go through these processes and then you again wait for the airline. And there again, interestingly, you might have another security check if it is—-I mean independence day or Republic Day. And then you get into the airline. So you've gone through five networks, so it doesn't stop here.

Now comes the interesting part. You get into the flight, you're going to fly. Now what happens now? The flight leaves Delhi. Then you have something known as communication and navigation satellites. So the flight is going from the Delhi ATC and then it goes into another. And then every flight worldwide is monitored in an ATC. When they pass one area of their ATC jurisdiction, then it can go into the Lahore ATC, it can go to some other ATC. So till you take your journey to New York, depending on the flight route continually, your aircraft is monitored till it lands in New York and in New York once you land, the same process happens again. So then you come into the airport network, the baggage ground handling network comes in, then your baggage is screened again by the TSA-Transportation Safety Administration. And as that is coming, you're going through the immigration, you're going through your customs and you come out, you have...
So if you really look at it, Puja, it's like close to eight to ten networks. That is a gridlock of networks. A simple example. Now we're starting at the security thing. So there's a long queue. You don't have a choice because you have a baggage. The security guy at the entrance can still scan your baggage and then let you go in. So you have a hassle over there. Your time goes in over there, and then you go to the queues of the airline, so you get handled over there. So this entire thing, which you get a message from the airlines, is very unfair simply for the fact that they're very much part of this entire network. And they can't say that the airports only are the reason for the hassle free… creating hassles. So then you have the customs. That's a sovereign function. Immigration is a sovereign function. You just simply cannot avoid them. When you land, you have to go through the same. So this entire gridlock of networks is what makes the airline and the airport business complex and can result in your anxieties. And once you get into the aircraft, you feel that, okay, now I've reached. I'm fine, and you will go there, but you can face turbulence. And the networks, which you have, are all very complex. And sometimes you're standing in the queue and you're not able to check in. And they would very cleverly tell that the airport network is down, so you wouldn't know whether it's airport network or the airline network, which is down. Recently, IndiGo had so many issues, but did they ever even tell that any message coming from their side, it didn't come in. So the blame can be just conveniently blamed there.
Or if the incoming aircraft is delayed, they'll just conveniently tell that the flight departure is delayed because the incoming flight is delayed. That flight also belonged to the same airline, but then they can conveniently put it on the airport to do this. I'm just giving you a hypothetical... An XYZ airline has 150 flights from Delhi departing in the mornings of a winter. They should at least have a minimum of 100 pilots trained in fog handling. There's every chance that they might not have met their criteria. I can tell you for sure that at the times when I used to be there at the Delhi airport, there was always a discrepancy wherein if the airline required five pilots, they would have only one or two trained pilots. So the other three pilots will handle an aircraft when the fog is cleared. And, well, this is also about profitability and other things. So what they do, take a call is a commercial call and the regulator has to be very strict in this and do it…. A classic example of airlines, I would say, you know, is that of the passenger charter. Today, how many of you, when you book your ticket or when you get delayed or when your flight gets canceled, I mean whatever the airline does, it's left to the discretion of the airline. A Spicejet can do something different, IndiGo can do different. Everything from giving you food to eat to telling you that I'll put you on another flight or telling you that you can go back. So a classic example is that recently a friend of mine was traveling by Vistara from Hyderabad to Chandigarh. So it was via Delhi. The flight between Hyderabad and Delhi was delayed by close to 2 hours. So there were 25 passengers who told that we'll be missing the Chandigarh flight. And they told that np, no, the Chandigarh flight will be waiting for you, there's no problem. And once they landed, what they did is they cleverly collected the boarding passes of passengers who were supposed to be traveling from Delhi to Chandigarh. And they told them to please wait. And they come back and tell that we are going to put in a bus to Chandigarh and they couldn't do anything. It was just take it or leave it. No amount of complaining, nothing. Because simply there's no passenger charter, there's no legislation to enforce any of the airline commitments. Absolutely nothing. And I'm just giving you one example. There are hundreds of these. The fact that the number of times flights get canceled, flights get rescheduled. I mean as a traveller you would know how many times it must have happened to you. But you're clueless. You just have to follow what the airline tells you, how you have your consumer rights. If you're buying food, right, you have your rights clearly defined. If there is something behind the package you see and do that. But in the case of airlines you don't have it. You have a clear passenger charter. What you buying it for? If the airline has not been able to meet this criteria, what is to be done? So there's a general legislation which gives the passenger rights and is reviewed every couple of years by the regulator who says that this is a fine you have to pay. This is what has to be done. If you reschedule a flight so many number of times, this will be the penalty. You have to be transparent as to why you have done this, why have the passengers been affected. So there is a continuous system of tracking which is made transparent and you get to know. So the airlines will be penalized or given the benefit of getting additional slots every six months in India that doesn't happen. You have the airport service quality standards on which airports are rated. These are all there. But what happens Pooja; These are all once in a quarter surveys which happen with a limited sample. It is not on a continuous basis. So to kind of improve this, there are few airports like that of Changi where on a daily basis they have complete data and they're looking at how today was, how next day is. It's made very transparent to passengers that today every passenger cleared the security in 15 minutes, 18 minutes, 30 minutes. So then that becomes transparency. So you are bettering the standards on your own then. Similar thing is baggage handling. As I mentioned to you, the first baggage will come ten minutes after the aircraft lands. Afterwards the last baggage can take one and a half hours and nobody's there to question that. So the other thing is punctuality of the airlines, everything says 99.9 or 91. It's about when they depart. Nothing happens as to when they land, what happens after the land. None of these are there. And today with technology, with so many other aspects, it's very easy to monitor.
Sometimes you see empty aero bridges, but you're taken by the bus. You must be wondering, why do I have to go by bus? Or when you land, your baggage doesn't come in time, you are again taken by a bus. So these rules are not known to the passenger is what it is. All airports have been told that 85% to 90% of the passengers have to go through aerobridges. So airlines are not using the aerobridges probably to save on cost, but they are following the process but saving on commercial aspects. Then what should be done about this? Is it that the pricing is not good, but this pricing is also again regulated by the regulator. So there are other factors on that.
So if you take care of this, it improves the passenger efficiency, it improves the utilization in the airport, it gets to better operational efficiency for the airlines also. But this doesn't seem to be a meeting point in this. If you look at other countries, there are very clear guidelines that you have to use this and this is the way you have to work. And if the airport doesn't meet the certain criteria, suppose the airport delays on some aspect or something, there are penalties which the airport has to pay the airlines. So everything is very clearly defined in the entire process flow of... you know from the time a passenger enters to the time a passenger leaves. So there are every single angle, there are performance criteria, there are service levels defined.
We might become perhaps one of the most sought after aviation markets after America and China. But then, trust me, we are nowhere there in terms of your service standards. Today, the largest airport is the Riyadh airport. The busiest airport is Atlanta. The airport with the maximum number of air traffic movements, Heathrow or O'Hare. The best service standards are Changi, then the best cleanliness… All this can be some other airport, the Chinese airports. It's very interesting that sometimes there is no standard set parameter to say which is the best airport. But there are very interesting practices which can be taken up from various airports, which is what a lot of the Indian airports have done. And it's just a matter of how you customize these kinds of things to the Indian needs. I'll give you a few interesting examples. In the Dutch airports, the turnaround time of an aircraft is one of the best because they kind of wanted to emulate the Fedex courier model because how fast is the guy coming in delivering? They saw what are the various aspects of it. They wrote down that there are 25-30 things. It's like somewhere the Formula One cars when they change their tyres. Once upon a time it used to take 25 30 seconds. Now it takes as less as 1.13 or 1.5 or two, 2.5 seconds to change a tyre. So it's an entire team effort, everybody coming together and doing it. So that is how the Dutch airports have done that.
Similarly, in terms of cleanliness, as I mentioned to you, Singapore, it just stands out in terms of cleanliness. So if worldwide it says that you have to clean the toilets once in an hour or that's a standard that's been set for Singapore does it every 15 minutes, 20 minutes. So every time you go in, the standards are clean then. Similarly, if you're looking for baggage retrieval systems and all that, different airports design different kinds of systems so that the baggage is delivered. A good example, as you see, when you travel to Europe and all that, though, the immigration queues can take time, usually by the time you're there, your entire package is there.
So that is another thing then. Immigration, as you see different places have different policies in the way you do it from the Europeans having a European card wherein you don't have to stand in the queue, or now you're having this pre checked-in travel. I don't know if you're aware if you're a passenger traveling to America via some of the…. I think it's Etihad…your check in… Your immigration check in is being done at Abu Dhabi rather than New York. So once you get off in New York, you can just walk out directly.

PM: Do you think it's because we have this whole VIP culture. People who are decision makers and policymakers actually never get to experience what the average passenger goes through because they have access directly to the aircraft. They are driven on the tarmac to the aircraft. They have no idea what it is like to sit and wait for flights or queue up for various things that you have to go through in getting into an airport right from that point to the time you get into the flight. And probably there's a disconnect between the policymaker and the passenger.
RV: As a student of public policy can say, the first and foremost thing that's currently happening in all aspects is the person who makes the policy doesn't seem to be the user, and the user doesn't have a say in the policy.

PM: What got me interested in airports was a conversation you and I had when Delhi airport had to be privatized, the management of it, and it was becoming so difficult because there was so much opposition to it. And you met me probably the first time we met, and you explained to me how complex airports are. The examples that you gave me. For instance, you said that on the rolls of the Delhi airport were staff members whose job profile or job role was to use slingshots to chase away birds, to prevent birds hits. Nobody can imagine that there could be such a job on an airport. And then you told me how the runways were at cross angles. And although Delhi airport had two runways, they could not be used at the same time because otherwise there was risk of collision.
RV:One of the interesting things, which I told you probably forgot, is that the airport had a few langurs to chase away monkeys.

PM: You've come to a point where you're writing a phd on regulation of airports, among probably other infrastructure projects. What are you recommending for regulation?
RV: Yeah, it's at early stages. I think I would just wait for my thesis to be completed rather than kind of speculating. So it's definitely a lot of things that I would be hoping to bring out and which can capture the attention of the policymakers.
PM: But I really hope that you are able to quickly put it together and it becomes one of the things that helps Indian regulation of airports become better. And on that note, let me say thank you to you for this conversation.