Air India now wants yet more money, like the prodigal son which keeps asking for money just to survive despite his drinking problem.

The company is unable to pay salaries but it needs millions just to sustain its operations. Yet, the people in charge will neither sell it off nor close it down.

Meanwhile, the no-frills airlines and the full service airline Kingfisher, which operate from the T3 terminal at New Delhi's International Airport have asked to be shifted to terminal 1D as the cost of fuel in terminal T3 is higher.

Oddly enough, previously these very airlines thought it was the high point of their existence in operating from T3, India's mega terminal.

Well, a slow moving market with few buyers changes things and priorities.

It calls for innovation. It is to be noted that Spicejet, the most efficient airline in India never asked to be shifted to T3. It concentrated on the job at hand to ferry as many passengers as possible per aircraft and do it at the lowest cost and highest margin off the cost of the ticket, possible.

Kingfisher Red is a no frills airline. Yet it has begun to offer boxed lunches free of cost with the cost of the tickets that it sells.

Airlines are a facilitator in a mature economy. Their seats are filled by business travellers and vacationers.

Airlines don't really sell the end product as in business products or vacation packages or services. They sell a seat to get you there.

Therefore, you don't travel to enjoy the airline seat but to get there.

If you don't need to get there, you will never buy an airline seat.

Therefore, it is high time, airlines tie up or diversify into their own arms selling hospitality and ensure that seat falls (pun intended) rise in number.

In short, airlines should diversify into various aspects of hospitality.

Other industries can innovate. They can offer various packages to entice reluctant customers but if a customer does not want to travel no amount of effort will make the customer budge. The airline is powerless to bring the customer back on board in such a situation.

Hospitality is a service industry. A customer can undergo a bitter experience owing to the slightest of problems.

The airline business is a service industry too but the customer is engaged from a period of 30 minutes to 30 hours at the best.

So it is a service industry quickie and not a relationship vehicle as it is in hotels.

The comparison is akin to a person travelling in an elevator to a person travelling in a long distance railway train.

The time available to forge a bond with the customer is too little. However, some airlines do not want to forge a bond at all.

They would rather sell a seat and then delay the flight until they can club all impending flights to make one fully occupied aircraft.

Others would get the job done and deliver passengers on time and not bother about the bells and whistles.

End of the day, it is a capital intensive business and does not yield very well to the ulcers of CEOs and impatience of shareholders.