Kingfisher Airlines

» see flykingfisher.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the goodbye ~

Kingfisher was a lager before it was an airline. United Breweries had been selling the beer across India for decades and Vijay Mallya ran the group. In 2003 he registered an airline under the same name and put four Airbus A320s in the air on 9 May 2005, flying Mumbai to Delhi.

What it sold was the cabin. Every seat had a personal entertainment screen at a point when Indian domestic flying still meant a tray and a printed magazine. The airline described itself as a five-star experience in the sky. Enough people believed it that by December 2011 Kingfisher was the second largest domestic carrier in the country, with 128 destinations on the map at its widest reach.

None of it made money. A premium cabin costs more to run than Indian domestic fares could carry. The 2007 purchase of the low-cost carrier Air Deccan was meant to fix that by giving Mallya a cheap-seat arm under the name Kingfisher Red. It lost money too and he closed it in 2011. By that year the debt was past nine thousand crore rupees.

I have never been on an Indian domestic flight. Kingfisher's entire life sits inside a market I have no access to. It flew 25 domestic routes at the end plus Heathrow and a few Asian cities. Istanbul was never on the list. Outside India the Kingfisher name mostly travels on a beer bottle.

~ the chronicle ~

~ the day it died ~

Salaries stopped in March 2012. By 20 February only 22 of the 64 aircraft were still airworthy. Market share had fallen to 11.3 percent and the airline had gone from second place to last. The Income Tax Department froze the bank accounts. Pilots and engineers who had not been paid in six months struck on 30 September.

Management answered with a lockout on 1 October and kept extending it. On 20 October 2012 the Directorate General of Civil Aviation suspended the flying license, saying the airline had produced no credible revival plan. The license expired on 31 December and was never renewed. On 25 February 2013 the international rights and the domestic slots were scrapped.

~ the funny part ~

Kingfisher was one week away from joining Oneworld. It signed the formal agreement on 7 June 2010 with a membership date set for 10 February 2012. On 3 February the alliance suspended the entry on financial grounds. An airline can be dropped from an alliance it never actually joined.

~ what it left on the books ~

By July 2014 Kingfisher's unpaid loans were the single largest non-performing asset held by India's state banks, more than 40 billion rupees. Vijay Mallya left the country in March 2016 while the recovery cases were running and settled in England, where he is still fighting extradition. The brand survives on beer. The airline's old domain now points at an offshore betting site.

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