Air Deccan gets serious about SMS

Customers can now book and confirm tickets via cellphones.

Air Deccan, the country's low-cost airline, claims to be the first player in India to offer a facility where consumers can not only book air tickets from anywhere in the world, but also pay for them and reshedule their flights through SMSes.

"We are soft launching this facility in southern India next week and would be nationally available by September this year," said Captain Gopinath, managing director, Air Deccan.

Till now the facility was available only for confirming tickets and not for booking them.

According Alok Kejriwal, CEO, Contest2Win, the delay has been due to a lack of secure payment gateways. He feels that mobile phone operators until now have not been keen to make micro-payment gateways, as it involved too many complicated loops.

Air Deccan has forged an alliance with the Bangalore-based Jigrahak Mobility Solutions which experimented with the technology for a year.

The new system called 'NG Pay' "" new generation payment mechanism, which is essentially a mobile payment platform. Consumers can call a NGPay call centre to access or download an application using their GPRS-enabled mobile phone or by just sending an SMS.

Once the data is loaded, the secured interactive platform is available in the phone memory. On the consumer's cue, it shows the airline options "" in this case the tickets for any Air Deccan flight.

Post this, the customer needs to specify their route and fare option along with credit card details, and soon thereafter the PNR/ticket number is flashed on the screen. The entire drill takes place very quickly, thanks to the hi-speed GPRS supported web connectivity. The PNR on the phone can be shown at the bookng office of the airport to secure a boarding pass.

According to Sourabh Jain of Jigrahak, the technology can also be used to book movie tickets. In fact, the company is already in talks with a leading multiplex and also a mobile operator where consumers can pay their post-paid bills and recharge their pre-paid cards using this technology. However it is not eschewing the travel agent route all together.

Late last year, Air Deccan ordered 62 new aircrafts - 32 A320s and 30 ATR-72s that are to be delivered over the next 60 months at almost one aircraft a month. The airline expects to achieve a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore, up from Rs 350 crore in 2004-05 from its 1.3 million passengers in the first year.

This year it is looking at 4.4 million passengers. Being a low-priced airline in India means a constant battle to contain costs and find innovative ways to enhance distribution. For Air Deccan, it has particularly been challenging, given that travel agents were reticent in pushing it initially for it offered them thin margins compared to most.

After its alliance with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) to distribute tickets through 22 HPCL petrol stations and its association with Reliance Webworlds, comes its experiment with mobile technology.