Kingfisher is a one a host of new Indian Airlines that have taken to the skies in the last few years. Kingfisher operates a fleet of Airbus A320 and A321 jets on domestic routes across India.
The Airbus A320 I flew on from Bangalore to Pune offered a single class of service, though the effort was made to make it "high class." Every seat was equipped with a personal video system very similar to that offered by JetBlue. I believe it was a live satellite feed, but I was unable to confirm that. The seat-backs offered 8 channels plus an in-flight GPS status page. I didn't see anyone watching the tedious collection of Bollywood musicals, but I assume it's popular with some passengers.
The flight from Bangalore to Pune is just about 90 minutes. In that short flight time, the Kingfisher staff provided amenity kits to every passenger that included complimentary headphones as well as a hot breakfast. The service was competent if not very friendly. I sat in an exit row and was made to move my small briefcase to the overhead bin even though it fit underneath the seat in front of me. In the exit row, leg room was barely acceptable and in regular rows it looked down right painfully tight in there.
Kingfisher gives every appearance of having an unsustainable cost structure, similar to Jet Airways. Catering short flights is probably not necessary and the impact on turn-around time is probably very serious. I didn't see published on-time performance ratings for Indian airlines, but I suspect they are poor and tend to get worse as flights collect delays during the course of the day. My return flight was over 3 hours late.
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