Jet offered world-class comfort in accessible way

Brands

come and go, and certainly airline brands have come and gone with predictable frequency, but the impending demise of Jet Airways feels like a loss. Its birth was significant, not just for the sector, but in helping reshape India’s self-image when it came to its ability to deliver a certain level of

quality

. For years it was the most credible of all airline services and for the most part of its life, offered a level of service that could be blindly relied upon. The last few years have been challenging for the carrier, but it still retains an enormous fund of goodwill among a large number of people.

The arrival of private airlines in India was one of those periods best described in the word that business finds so attractive — game-changing. Before the opening up of the aviation sector to the private companies, flying had become a truly unpleasant chore. Memories abound of interminable delays about which there was no information, pokey airports with no facilities, stinky toilets, airline staff that regarded passengers with bureaucratically prescribed disapproval, food that was often difficult to describe using any familiar benchmarks — the list of what was wrong can go on. Used as we were to this sarkari-grade indifference of the public sector airlines, private airlines were a shock of efficiency and delivered a sense of luxury that felt altogether novel. In those early days, when airlines started serving alcohol, the service went out of its way to try and cater to one’s needs better than its competitors, and the food became a selling feature rather than a test of endurance, and the passengers were giddy with delight at the transformation that they were witnessing. The opening up of the sector was accompanied by a gradual but determined effort to improve the quality of the airports, and this added to the overall experience. Of course, there were many early casualties. This is a sector that is famously the graveyard of many ambitions, and propelled more by enthusiasm than any real understanding of what it takes to succeed in this business, most entrants died quick deaths. Modiluft, Damania, East West, NEPC, Jagson, Archana are some of the names that expired quickly. Sahara,

Air

Deccan and Kingfisher lasted longer, but they too perished, in some cases quite noisily. Jet seemed to always rise above the tumult in the sector, finding a way to stay on course in spite of many ups and downs.

From the very outset, Jet was a brand that communicated a kind of professionalism that was shorn of any excessive flourish, but delivered on what was really important to passengers. Beginning with its name, which made no attempts to communicate anything specific, there was not much that was external to the core service that the brand focused on. The attire of the crew was professional, their manner solicitous without being cloyingly friendly, the food was predictably good rather than being excessively adventurous, and the ground staff was responsive and helpful. It was an airline one could take for granted, and it made flying easy and pleasurable. Jet lacked the flair and the trappings of luxury that Kingfisher offered, nor did it possess the well-designed gloss of IndiGo, but it offered world-class comfort in an easily accessible way. Jet could perhaps be best described as middle-of-the-road done really well.

To an Indian market that was starved of experiences of efficient service, Jet became a beacon of sorts. For most consumers, service in India seemed almost to be designed to make them feel smaller. The very idea that one needed something seemed to put the service provider in a position of power. While the public sector had earned its poor reputation when it came to providing service, the private sector too was not some shining example of courtesy and thoughtfulness.

When the effects of liberalisation are spoken of, one of the dominant changes that are highlighted is in the dramatic opening out of choice in a country that was starved for it. Usually, this shift gets represented by the explosion in the availability of many new products. The Ambassador and the Fiat serve as the abiding symbols of a time of a poverty of choice, and the post-liberalisation abundance is contrasted with the same. But perhaps, more significant was the opening out of the service sector and the corresponding changes that ensued as a result. Private sector airlines and banks were at the forefront in redefining the idea of service.

In an earlier time, service oscillated between servility and rank indifference. Who you were determined how you were served. VIPs would be served slavishly while the ordinary customer would be treated as an errant child, to be repeatedly admonished and kept in line. The paying service seeker was the supplicant, and the provider of the service the granter of the occasional favour. The personal was valued over the professional; we sought to go to people we knew for only then could we be assured of some personal attention. Even when it came to professions like medicine or law, one tended to value familiarity over expertise. Brands like Jet played a key role in bringing about a fundamental re-imagination of the very idea of professional service.

In that sense, Jet became part of the cohort of Indian brands that helped boost the country’s confidence in itself. To produce world-class service in a highly competitive sector was a real challenge in every possible way. Today, as far as the quality of domestic air travel goes, India would rank ahead of many more advanced nations. What is tragic is that what has undoubtedly been an Indian success story should meet its end this way. The brand is still healthy, it is the business that has failed. The airline and its management has largely itself to blame for what has happened, but for the sake of its consistently excellent employees, one hopes that the brand does get revived in one form or the other.


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