No, transportation isn’t on auto-pilot

Autorickshaws — or, more precisely, their drivers — are temperamental. They do not always want to go where people want them to, they often deliberately take circuitous routes, they overcharge and often claim that their fare meters are not working. Commercial airlines, on the other hand, despite some recent alarming stories about shenanigans in the cockpit of a flight from London to Mumbai, are far more predictable and reliable mode of transportation.

Their destinations and routes are preset and their drivers (pilots) are not generally prone to detours. So, some may think the minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha was winging it when he compared airlines to autorickshaws by pointing out that the former was the cheaper ride, kilometre for kilometre.

Factually speaking, he is right: per-km cost on cheap fares does indeed work out to Rs 5 whereas autorickshaws charge between Rs 6 and Rs 10 for the same distance. But then, no one would (or could) take a plane from one point in the city to another, or be silly enough to hail an autorickshaw to travel a long way out of the city, say, from Delhi to Indore — where the minister made this observation.


Therefore, luckily for autorickshaw drivers and airline companies, any disgruntlement with one mode of transportation will not inevitably lead to a benefit for the other.