In the low-returns aviation market, how many airlines should India have?

At the heart of commercial aviation industry's problems lies deregulation

Kingfisher Airlines went bankrupt. Air India is finding it hard to pay salaries. Jet Airways is in similar trouble as well. Elsewhere, Lufthansa is not in the pinkest of health financially. Nor is United Airlines. Nor are a whole host of other airlines. The list is altogether too long.

  

But then that’s the airline business for you – glamorous, though not as much as it used to be; cyclical; beset by excessive competition; plagued by unpredictable short-run costs; and, therefore, always yielding low returns to the investors. It is a sobering thought that in any ten-year period the industry as a