Thread by @AIOVA3

1. Imagine you own an airliner with a large fleet and there is no regulation like DGCA (INDIA) or FAA (USA).

You are running your major operations on the busiest sector like Mumbai-Delhi or New York - Atlanta.

Timing is one of the most crucial things to sustain business.

2. Why? Because pilots, airports, crew etc charge by the hour, the airplane is not profitable on ground.
Customers also prefer ontime departure and arrival so that they are not stuck sitting on one seat while waiting to reach the destination and getting on with work.

3. Because it is one of the most busiest sector, there is no problem of getting passengers, but the major problem is getting space to park, slot for landing and taking off, access to passenger services, baggage handling etc. which all depends on the airport operator who charges

4. .. a fee for all these services equally to all competitors through a publicized rate card.

Now imagine you have a competitor lets say Amazon, who is suddenly adding more planes to the route, poaching your crew and pilots at higher pay, and charging lower to PAX

5. As a seasoned businessman, you would imagine this to be only a temporary hiccup.
However, you see your weekly reports, and see your planes are now spending more time on ground and getting delayed on landing and take offs.
This goes on for 6 months...

6. So you sit on the cockpit yourself as a trained pilot and try to do "root cause analysis".
You see that you have closed your gate right in time, and you are taxiing towards the runway, you have been given waiting of 3 before you can take off, you find out there is still time

7. And maybe it was issue of your pilot who was deliberately delaying your flights.
Assuming you have solved the problem, you relax.
Now it is time for you to take off, however suddenly out of nowhere you see an Amazon plane going ahead of you and taking off

8. Confused, you think there must be some misunderstanding at your part. Now again you prepare to take your turn and you have been asked to wait for a plane to land, which again is Amazon. Again another Amazon plane comes and takes off and this goes on and on until you finally

9. get take off permission after all Amazon flights have taken off, but, you are already past your landing time, so you have to pay penalty to the destination airport.
You find that customers including FF are unhappy due to such frequent delays and are giving negative reviews,

10. Worse, on landing you find out that lot of bags of customers got damaged in loading, which is now to be reimbursed.

After a rough calculation, you calculate that this trip resulted in a loss due to all penalties by the operator and damages due to no mistake of yours.

11. After a few weeks, you see that customers are commenting saying that you are higher priced and bad in service and have been fleecing them since years until Amazon came and started offering lower prices and right on time landing.
Your losses are mounting up, cash flow negative

12. You go to the airport operator and ask him why such an issue is happening. Airport operator tells you to increase quality of pilots, get better aircrafts, better systems etc but does not answer why Amazon was given preference in take off queue,

13. You try these suggestions, invest lot of money and time, and still do not find any improvement. Suddenly you find out that Amazon airline is owned by the airport operator. You also find out that The operator is not charging any fees from Amazon airline.

14. One day the airport operator decides to increase the rates with immediate effect and also adds new charges.
Your calculation says you wont be able to survive, you take this up in public, but public says "Hey, the operator is in a loss, he needs to charge you to survive"

15. After putting all your money in to this business to find a nice sunny day, you receive a letter from the operator telling you that you shall no longer be allowed to operate on that airport due to frequent customer complaints, low quality service and delay in landing.

16. On the same day, Amazon airline poaches all the quality crew, increases planes, and announces huge discounts to increase passengers, so that they can sell other non airline services to them.

And you and your airline are meant only for history books.

17. Above is what Amazon and Flipkart sellers are facing everyday. This whole melee is only surviving because till now Amazon airline has not crashed and caused loss of life.
But do we have to wait till that day?

18. Platform operators need to be unbiased, jurisprudent, rational and without any conflict of interest.

Until the government doesnt step in and makes P2B rules, a seller a day is going to shutdown in India.

Disclaimer : This is applicable to conduct of all platforms.

@adamscrabble 👆