Report on Role play - Budget Airlines ..23/9/19

The importance of role lay to get the students to know about the management decision making process cannot be better put through other than through a role play session in the class.

In the Alliance School of Business sem 3 MBA Operations, Operations Strategy we did a role play on the Low Cost Airlines. The case for the discussion was written by the author way back in 2017 and revised in 2019. (click here).

Accordingly we prepared a list of the stakeholders in the case and got the students to do a role play in the class on the same. (click here for the presentation)

The benefits of role play

• Students immediately apply content in a relevant, real world context.
• Students take on a decision making persona that might let them diverge from the confines of their normal self-imposed limitations or boundaries.
• Students can transcend and think beyond the confines of the classroom setting.
• Students see the relevance of the content for handling real world situations.
• The instructor and students receive immediate feedback with regard to student understanding of the content.
• Students engage in higher order thinking and learn content in a deeper way.
• Instructors can create useful scenarios when setting the parameters of the role play when real scenarios or contexts might not be readily available.
• Typically students claim to remember their role in these scenarios and the ensuing discussion long after the semester ends.                                 www.carleton.edu

Kempegowda International airport, Bangalore, courtesy The Hindu.

While doing the role play, we came to realise from the deliberations that happened in the class that the Government policy of LPG plays a big role in deciding the rates of taxes and motivation these private low cost airlines have in giving the best service to the customers in the country.

The customers and the airlines were asking for a roll down of the taxes charged by the government on the tickets, airport usage fee and on the fuel used by the planes, but the government was very silent, given that a large portion of the money the central government receives is from the fuel taxes and surcharges. This is the revenue part of the government on which the central government has a firm and decisive say.

The petroleum companies were pointing fingers at the government citing the policy parameters within which they are forced to work and their helplessness in reducing the taxes. The fuel price increase is the result of global volatility of the fuel prices.

IATA, wanted the budget airlines management to give the best to the customers by way of better coordinated high quality services, better connectivity, more in-flight facilities, on-time functioning of flights etc.

Indigo - India's largest budget airline, 240 planes, 48% domestic market share, June '19

The flying public were also worried about the transportation time it takes to travel to the present Kempegowda international airport in the northern suburbs of Bangalore city. The Secretary of aviation has promised that he will be talking to his counterpart in  the transportation ministry to speed up the Metro construction in Bangalore.

The prospect of a new domestic or international airport coming up at Hosur was a matter of concern for the domestic flight operators as they have one more node in the country to address and which would necessitate their redirection and re-planning of flights within the country.  IATA was fully confident that the new airport at Hosur would convert many of the local train and bus passengers to air passengers, as presently the very high commute time of almost 3 hours to Kempegowda airport was discouraging passengers from travel by air. 

The Bangalore airport handled almost 33 million passengers in 2018-19, third only to New Delhi (69 million) and Mumbai (49 million) during the same period and was ready to commission the second runway by Oct 2019. Since the meeting happened in Bangalore, the issues relating to Bangalore air passengers were highlighted in the high level meeting convened by the IATA and Secretary, Aviation GOI.

The meeting ended with a vote of thanks by the IATA representative.

George