Mktg - Kingfisher to phase out Deccan brand

To offer dual services under umbrella brand.

Simplifly Deccan, the low-cost carrier (LCC) brand formed after the merger of full service airline Kingfisher and the LCC Air Deccan, may soon cease to exist.

Kingfisher, which completes its merger with Air Deccan this month, will leverage the Deccan licence, which meets the stipulated five years of operations to fly overseas, but use its own brand to fly international routes from September 3 and gradually replace it in the domestic market too.

Sources close to the development said the international routes will have only full service operations, but the Kingfisher brand on the domestic routes will incorporate two models under one brand — a full service carrier and a more upgraded LCC service.

"An announcement to this effect could be made soon," the sources said. Kingfisher executives were not available for comment.

Yesterday, Deccan received government approval to operate seven weekly flights from Bangalore to London. Deccan, which completes five years of domestic operations on August 26, has already been designated for 13 international destinations, which include the US and the UK and short-haul destinations like Singapore, Hong Kong and West Asia.

Several airlines have tried differential positioning after mergers and acquisitions. Last year, Jet Airways, the country’s largest private carrier, bought full-service carrier Air Sahara, renamed it JetLite and repositioned it as a value carrier.

The merger of state-owned Air-India and Indian Airlines created a new company, Air India, for domestic and international operations that use the same brand. Air India also, however, has a low-cost international brand called Air India Express.

Last year Kingfisher undertook a Rs 2,500-crore branding exercise of Air Deccan that aligned the brand more closely with Kingfisher. For instance, the trademark Kingfisher bird was added to the Deccan logo of two hands and the airline’s signature colour of red was incorporated into the Deccan aircraft instead of the earlier Deccan colours of yellow and white.

Crew uniform and livery were also changed accordingly. Meanwhile, sources from the travel portal industry said that Kingfisher has already shifted to the Sabre ticketing platform, Deccan is also looking at shifting to the same platform.

"This would give them advantages of ticketing, though the two carriers might retain their respective codes of IT (Kingfisher) and DN (Deccan)," said a travel portal executive