Simply Fly

by Capt G R Gopinath

  Ajay Bhatkal was not a software engineer. He had spent a long time in IT companies and had the experience and the know-how to conceptualize products and services from the customer’s point of view. He was down to earth and showed a depth of perspective and technical acumen. I told Ajay, ‘E-ticketing should be our forte: I don’t care what it takes, but we are not going to print tickets. You find a way, and only then can you join me.’

  The conference call with Navitaire lasted four hours. I was prepared to hire a local company if the discussion with Navitaire fell through. It would be risky, perhaps suicidal. Local IT companies would not have had exposure to the airline reservation context and I did not want to be a guinea-pig for their experiments. However, without the online ticketing system the airline would not in any event take off. Better risk and die, rather than die without taking a risk.

  Navitaire explained what the reservation platform would be able to do. The reservation system would connect to the call centre and to the airports. The virtual private network (VPN) backbone would be critical to the functioning of the reservation platform. It would provide robust and fail-proof connectivity.

  VPN uses a combination of communication channels, including optical fibre cabling, the copper lines laid by the departments of post and telegraphs and cellular mobile phone infrastructure (base stations and cell transmitter networks). The VPN also uses VSAT or virtual satellite connectivity, a satellite-based transponder and receiver system. Specially designed software would control how the signals traverse the system comprising all these components. It would be a dedicated network with redundancy and backup built into it.

  We on our part were clear that we needed a system that allowed travel agent and passenger alike to be able to access the Internet interface and buy the tickets from the Deccan reservation inventory, the common ticketing resource for all.

  We needed a reservation system that allowed the passenger, or travel agent, to pay by credit card. We needed software that interfaced our system and the bank. We also needed a bank that would handle the transaction authentication, and safe and secure VPN connectivity between the bank and the call centre. India in those days did not have call centres for Indians but only those operated by Indians for foreign countries as BPOs. Therefore, while ticket booking enquiry was logged here in Bengaluru for a Bengaluru– London or Frankfurt journey on a British Airways flight, the money-andticketing transaction took place abroad.

  Navitaire said we would have to make an earnest deposit before they began to work on the system for us. From the day we deposited the money, they needed sixty clear days to customize the template that had been proven in operations in Europe, the US, and south-east Asia. The system would have to be married to our VPN interfaces and our software, and suitable handshakes created for the system to work seamlessly. Issues with credit card companies and banks would have to be addressed.

  We only had six months to go for the launch. The meter was ticking with pilot salaries, aircraft maintenance, demurrage on real estate, cost of being on ground, and interest on borrowed money. We also needed to work with a bank to create a payment gateway and build software that talked to our software and securely handled transactions. We needed call centre software and needed to make all software mutually intelligible, mutually compatible, and speak the same idiom. We needed to create a system that was entirely safe, private, secure, and foolproof. We could not afford more than four months for systems and software development. We would then have two months for trials and fixing glitches and bugs.

  I had made it amply clear to team members that they must bear two things in mind: they must create the lowest-cost airline and must create a supporting IT system that was robust, scalable, and easy for the passenger.

  A passenger should be able to buy a ticket as easily as he bought a bottle of shampoo across the counter! They were free to explore ways and innovate but these two deliverables were paramount. This sense of freedom helped.

  Everyone down the line, from senior management to new inductee, had to be given a sense that s/he had a domain of influence. Everyone must be made to feel that what s/he does in his or her area of influence can change the company’s destiny. It is this conveyance and realization of a common dream that motivates people to raise the bar.

  I often said to the head of sales and marketing that millions followed Mao because of an idea, a dream. Millions followed Gandhi, Hitler, and Nelson Mandela. The followers believed, and were given to believe, they could make a difference. This was happening at Deccan. I asked my team to find a way and to create one if none existed.

  At Deccan every employee became an extension of the CEO. Every employee took a direct part in the adventure. It was a courageous leap taken collectively. The single decision taken, that we would not print tickets, uncovered new solutions.

  Success in the case of the LCC depended on universal access, not just travel agents, across the world. Deccan was trying to create this new space by taking inventory out of the clutches of travel agents. It is sheer courage that opens up new vistas. The uncharted land is not accessible to those lacking the derring-do.

  Home-grown IT companies also pitched their proposals to build an IT-based reservation system. None of them had a system up and running; it was still in their heads or on their laptops. We wanted software that had gone through the grime and the dust of robust use in real-life situations.

  Navitaire had all that. Navitaire’s system was being used by thirty airlines, was robust and scalable. They had made a name for themselves as the Rolls Royce of ticketing systems but were sitting on a high horse.

  We had several rounds of Internet/video-conferencing with them before their team visited India. The team showed little enthusiasm for India, believing we were at least ten years behind time. However, as we had no alternatives I had almost decided to yield to them and make the huge deposit they had been demanding. There was no other alternative.

  Navitaire made a presentation which my entire technology team attended. There were also a couple of representatives from Citibank. Citibank was the only bank that we were aware of at the time that had Internet banking.

  Citibank was a global operation and would partner with us only if they saw potential for future growth. I called the local head of Citibank and asked whether the bank was willing to step in tandem with what could be India’s largest airline. I said that if our model worked, the bank stood to gain and would also be able to attract other airline accounts.

  I said the Citibank payment gateway software should be able to process all ticketing transactions issued by Master or Visa card globally. These transactions could be generated by individuals, booking agents, or call centres online. The software must be able to complete a transaction in seconds, because longer transaction time, or latency, would send up call centre communication bills. The software had to work at lightning speed and ensure end-to-end transaction, from first click to sale, in two or three minutes.

  The transaction involved several steps: query, ticket inventory check, confirmation (whether available or not - if not, a new query is generated and it iterates), customer credit card detail input, credit card approval and acknowledgement, system confirmation and PNR issue, and print-out. The average time required to conclude each of these eight steps, provided there are no iterations, should not exceed fifteen seconds if the entire operation was to be completed within two to three minutes. These were intimate system requirements and it was very important for Deccan to work closely with a bank on this.

  Meanwhile, IATA-registered travel agents attempted to exert oblique pressure and blackmail the airline, threatening to boycott my airline if I sold tickets through the Internet. I explained to their representative that I wanted to give the passengers a choice between booking directly online or through travel agents. Of course even travel agents would have to book online, and they could work out an arrangement of the service charges they would levy on their customers. I said that online booking was an idea whose time had arrived. If I di
d not adopt it, someone else would. I made it clear that I was not against travel agents but maintained that my airline would revolutionize flying in India and that the number of travellers increase many times over than they currently were. I said 100 million people would be flying in a few years when the LCC model stabilized. They therefore stood to gain more by controlling, for instance, 20 per cent of a larger pie when a billion people flew than by monopolizing the entire domain when thirteen million flew. The travel agents were not convinced, arguing that I must split the ticketing access between IATA travel agents and passengers, and not bring in subagents as we were doing at the time. I did not acquiesce to their request and they left in a huff.

  The Navitaire presentation took all day. At the end of the sessions we decided to sign on for their reservation system by paying a million dollars as deposit, all the money that I had got from Ladhani as minimum income guarantee whether passengers flew the airline or not. Only minutes before signing the dotted line, the Citibank representative suddenly asked the Navitaire delegate what software they would be using to integrate with the bank payment gateway.

  Navitaire cited the software system they were using whereupon the Citibank executive exclaimed and said the bank had already implemented an upgrade of the old software. He said he was concerned that the Navitaire software would not be able to talk to Citibank’s upgraded software and that they had abandoned the legacy software two years earlier.

  Four months of video-conferencing plus a couple of one-on-one meetings had yielded this conclusion. I suddenly saw that things don’t happen because people don’t communicate effectively. We don’t sit across and talk person to person, hiding behind emails that are incapable of expressing the nuances of communication which only face-to-face interactions allow.

  I was shocked. I turned to the Navitaire representative and said, ‘I asked you to come to Bengaluru four months ago but you didn’t. You were doing everything over the Internet and now you are discovering that your software is incompatible with Citibank’s. You don’t speak a common language. Forget software language, this is common sense!’ We were now in a bind.

  I asked the Navitaire team to call up and ask their superiors in the management whether the company would be willing to invest in the new software. The leader of the three-member Navitaire team said he would have to go back and confer with his team before deciding. I was, however, in a hurry. I could not delay the launch. The arrow had left the bow! I suggested they stay back for another day or two and sort out the matter with their colleagues but I must know whether or not they were going to do it.

  The leader of the team went out and made a couple of calls. He came back and said, ‘Captain, I don’t think I’ll be able to give you an answer. I have to go back to my head office and consult my colleagues.’ I was blunt and said with finality, ‘Look, if you walk out of this room without finalizing the agreement, I will cancel the MOU.’ He looked at me in disbelief. I gave them two hours to give me their final decision, whereupon they went into a huddle.

  The marketing people of an Indian company Interglobe Technologies (IGT) had been chasing me for this contract. I had not paid much attention to them, even though they seemed to be a smart bunch, because they did not have a system that was up and running. I knew that much of the Navitaire software was being developed in the back offices of Bengaluru, or Pune, or Delhi. I had told the Navitaire people right at the outset that I was considering them only because they already had a proven system.

  When the Navitaire team went to confer with their colleagues, I went to meet the young team from IGT who had been anxiously awaiting the results of our negotiations with Navitaire. These software engineers had floated in on a wave of reverse ‘brain drain’ from the US to India. These IGT ‘boys’ had shown both energy and enthusiasm and had impressed me at earlier meetings, and wished I could have given them the contract but had been warned that it was suicidal to give it to a company with no experience with a functional system.

  The IGT team exhibited the innate Indian trait of being able to deal with dilemmas and function in the midst of chaos. They seemed unfazed by the complexity of the IT infrastructure we would require. Our software and IT system logic was unique. We would be selling tickets at Internet cafes, petrol bunks, and post-offices. Passengers without a credit card could buy tickets at our call centre which would hold the ticket for a few hours until the passenger returned to make a cash deposit at Deccan’s city or airport office. All these were very complex requirements, but the Indian techies from IGT were ready to come up with a solution. The problem with Indians, I have been told by foreigners, is that they don’t know how to say ‘No’.

  After a while, the Navitaire representative called, but only to say he had been unable to contact his team back home. They would have to return to decide. I did not dither. I said, ‘Let us kiss the contract goodbye.’ The next morning I signed up with IGT. We had forty-five days to set up everything from scratch.

  There were several other things we had to attend to. Most importantly, we had to get our own call centre up and running but also had to complete legal formalities with regard to purchase of aircraft, and organize engineering and maintenance support. We had besides to hire pilots and have them ATR-trained.

  Qualified pilots certified to fly one type of aircraft, say a Boeing, cannot readily fly another aircraft such as ATR or Airbus because of the differences in instrumentation, process control, and performance, among others. In advanced countries, such pilots train on a simulator, a marvel of human inventiveness. It has been continually improved upon by manufacturers so that even conditions that a pilot does not normally encounter when flying are replicated. Manufacturers have realized that the simulator offers a fuller experience of reality than reality itself! A pilot who undertakes conversion training on a simulator is better prepared to fly the aircraft than training on the aircraft itself, which appears curious but is nonetheless true. After rigorous simulator training for about a month and a half, pilots elsewhere are able to straightaway fly the aircraft itself after one familiarization check.

  In India, the DGCA, governed by rules formulated in 1937, required that a pilot who was qualified to fly one type of aircraft must fly 300 to 500 hours on the target aircraft type as a trainee for certification. This was the old practise and, after the arrival of the simulator, the DGCA asked pilots to do both: train on the simulator and also log 300 to 500 hours on the new aircraft for certification. For airlines, this is a huge additional cost, and for a start-up like ours it could be ruinous.

  I pleaded with the DGCA to acknowledge present-day realities and bring their regulations on par with the US and European regulations. I was not in any way asking for a compromise on safety. The DGCA saw reason in my request and brought down the extra flying hours for captains from 500 to 300 hours in some cases and 300 to100 hours, in others.

  Managing an airline demands that routines at every functional node are meticulously synchronized. This applies to the front-end of airline operations: bookings, check-in, and departure, and also to the back- end: flight operations, aircraft engineering and maintenance, and ground-handling. The chief engineer for maintenance would have to track the routine upkeep of aircraft, undertaken at night between midnight, i.e., after the last flight, and 4 a.m., i.e., before the first flight; track parts replacements, by calendar and by wear and tear; place orders with sufficient headway for the parts to be sourced and shipped in; and ensure the engineering inspection is meticulously undertaken every twenty-four hours.

  We had to hire the line-maintenance engineers, rig up general and specialized tools and sheds, equip hangars, and acquire the requisite minimum inventory for DGCA approval. We could have tied up with Indian Airlines to provide aircraft maintenance services. The IA was willing, but that would add to our cost profile. Besides, being government-owned, IA were likely to be slow to respond to emergency requests we might occasionally make. Also, depending on IA would make us complacent about setting up our own maintenance an
d inventory management capabilities.

  I had already included a clause in the agreement with ATR that they would provide the chief engineer, spare parts, and support for heavy engineering and major overhauls. I sensed some conflict of interest here. If there was a manufacturing problem it would not be as easy for us to complain to the manufacturer than if there had been a third-party maintenance contract or if we had decided to undertake it ourselves. However, that was just the beginning of the venture and we needed ATR’s support, and besides it was in their interest to ensure that we succeeded. Our Indian engineers would handle day-to-day maintenance under the supervision of the French engineer from ATR, and the latter would also help us by providing some pilot trainers to help us.

  What remained were clearances from the DGCA, Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), AAI, and the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA). I fortunately had the backing of Rajiv Pratap Rudy and so went ahead and fixed a date for the launch. I decided to bill top political leaders on the programme note, which would certainly help us attract media attention. There was however one thing I religiously observed: I would not compromise on safety and would be internally 100 per cent compliant with all mandatory stipulations. That would give me the moral strength to pressurize the bureaucracy to speed up documentation and clearances.

  The bureaucracy reads between the lines. Once word gets around that a project has the blessings of the minister, officials work doubly hard to ensure permissions and licences become available in time. Rudy had made an announcement in parliament, to thunderous applause from all the benches, that Air Deccan would begin operations with the objective of creating unprecedented connectivity. He was inundated with enquiries from fellow ministers and MPs asking about the launch date and whether the airline would be flying to Jabalpur, or Ranchi, or Tuticorin, or Nagpur.