Legs and legroom

Legs and Leg Room
As I stretched my legs on the Air India flight at Bangalore, sometime back, waiting for it to take off one phrase sprang to my mind for the nth time. "The choice is between legs and leg room"

Well, I was comparing once more in my mind the difference between Air India which I had flown since I was a child and the new airlines like Kingfisher. In Air India one was waited upon by matronly looking air hostesses, who in the words of the late P G Wodehouse were built for stability and not speed. Kingfisher on the other hand has a collection of pretty young things with hourglass figures. Another Wodehousian expression describes their speed of service--she almost met herself while coming in. Add to this the fact that the chairman of the UB Group which runs Kingfisher Airlines himself welcomes you on board with a video taped message, a la Richard Branson on Virgin Atlantic, the aura is complete.

There is one thing though that you cannot do on a Kingfisher flight and for that matter on many of the flights of the new airlines--i.e. stretch your legs. The new airlines represent the world and lifestyle of today-compression of time and space. And yes package it attractively. That explains the attractive air-hostesses and the welcome by Mr. Mallya as well as the lack of leg room.

An Air India flight despite the matrons and a belated welcome by the pilot (which incidentally comes closer to the time you are going to land on short duration flights) offers you the chance to stretch your legs. The aircraft size harks of an era gone where the accent was on doing things right than just doing them fast. It is also a reminder of the days when, unlike now, leisure was a part of life.

True the only thing constant in life is change and even Air India has to change. That explains the merger with Indian Airlines and the birth of a new entity The National Aviation Company of India Limited (NACIL)

I hope that NACIL at the time of replacing aircraft does not shop for the new and sleek ones but sticks to the wide bodied ones. For that matter if the airline shores up its service its comfortable aircraft could emerge as the real differentiator in the marketplace. The choice may then not be so clear between legs and legroom.