Paying for priority seating

The Government of India recently permitted airlines to charge for special services, including preferred seats. So what have our friends (who, BTW, are pretty starved for cash and profits) been up to?

Jet Airways

Jet seems to be the only full-service carrier (they also have no-frills flights where you can buy meals etc on board) that has launched this. They call it Seat Select. It applies to specific routes only. They have 2 types of seats - Comfort and Standard.
  • Comfort seats are in Premiere cabin (I'm guessing this is an all-economy flight, otherwise) on the Dubai-Mangalore and return service. - Rs 3,950 (approx US$65)
  • Comfort seats are also in row 10 (the first row in Economy) on specified routes. - Rs 750 (~US$ 13)
  • Standard seats are in rows 11-15 in Economy (overwing seats, and they don't use a row #13). - Rs 500 (~US$ 7)
    Note - depending on equipment used, one or two rows out of these will be non-reclining, so be careful.

UPDATE - 31 July 2013
Jet has also announced a charge on "select" international flights, which are:


  • Comfort seats - bulkhead row (first row in Economy after the separator / divider) - Rs 750 (~US$ 13)
  • Standard seats - aisle / window seats in rows 11-15 in Economy - Rs 400 (~US$ 6)


The charges don't apply for JetPrivilege Platinum and Gold members.

You can read more about it here.

Indigo Airlines

They offer Seat Plus. The deal is:
  • All seats on row 1 (first), 12 and 13 (both overwing exit rows) - Rs 500 (~US$ 9)
  • Window and aisle seats on rows 2 and 3 - Rs 500 (~US$ 9)
  • Window and aisle seats on rows 4-11 and 14-30 - Rs 200 (~US$ 4)
  • For international flights, premium seats are Rs 800 (~US$ 14) and other window/aisle seats are Rs 300 (~US$ 5) each.


This makes it the entire aircraft. So on a total capacity of 180 (30 rows * 6), 126 seats can be paid for - that's just over two-thirds! Daylight robbery, I say !!! This also nets them around Rs 63k additional per flight (irrespective of distance). Given that some seats may be corporate bookings, or VIP ea

The fine print: If you do not with to pre-book, your seat will be assigned at the time of check-in without any charge. This has mostly negative connotations - basically, you will be assigned a middle seat 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time is when all middle seats are taken by groups of 2 or 3, and poor Indigo is left only with window or aisle seats. Maybe even 1% is a bit too much, but I was never good at math...

You can read more about it here.

SpiceJet

They call it Preferred Premium Seating. Works like this:


  • On the Boeing flights: Domestic - Rs 500 (~US$ 9); International - Rs 750 (~US$ 13)
  • On the Bombardier flights: Front row - Rs 500 (~US$ 9); Rows 2/3 - Rs 300 (~US$ 13) - applies to both domestic and international flights
  • Emergency exit row seats are treated as Premium seats



You can read more about it here.

Summary and conclusion

No matter what each airline calls it, the bottom line is that they are looking at this new policy of the government to maximise revenues. The above charges for seats, if charged for all relevant tickets (ie, no exceptions made), airlines could make anywhere between 2-6% additional revenue on flights. Not a bad deal at all - as long as they don't get too greedy. Better to have status - available only on Jet (in the above list) - and avoid the charges. Interestingly, Air India does not have such charges. And to be honest, much as I am (was?) a Jet aficionado, I think AI may be a better deal overall these days.

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