Experience shows that so long as its management remains in the hands of a bureaucrat, there is practically no chance of lasting redemption for Air India

The axe finally fell on the Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Air India Arvind Jadav on August 12, when he was replaced by Rohit Nandan, a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA). An officer of the 1978 batch of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Karnataka cadre, Jadav, who was appointed as CMD in May 2009 for a threeyear term, was reverted to his parent cadre prematurely for “failure on all parameters and lacklustre performance”. Rohit Nandan, the third CMD the airline has seen in the last three years, is an Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS officer of 1982 batch. He would be functioning under his mentor Nasim Zaidi, Secretary MoCA, coincidentally also from the UP cadre. Nandan takes over at a time when the airline is in total disarray. Its finances are in a frightening mess with cumulative losses at Rs. 20,320 crore, loans on working capital and on long-term fleet acquisition amounting to Rs. 43,200 crore, dues to Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the oil companies pegged at around Rs. 5,000 crore. With all these, the total liability will stand at an astounding Rs. 68,520 crore ($15.2 billion). During the last financial year, Air India has lost on an average Rs. 21.5 crore a day and continues to do so. Today, the airline is not in a position to meet the interest payment liability and is unable to pay on time even the basic salaries due to its employees. The airline has been surviving on periodic dole from the government which has been a debilitating burden on the national exchequer.

Apart from the financial malaise, the legacy bequeathed by the successive managements of the airline in recent years, have been steadily propelling the airline to a certain demise. What is noteworthy is that the downslide acquired unusual momentum during the tenure of the outgoing CMD seemingly on account of the “Don Quixote” type of approach adopted by him towards the employees who struck work three times during his two-year stint. The airline has also been devastated by a number of strategic decisions at the level of the Ministry of Civil Aviation thrust upon the CMD. As a part of a cover up exercise, these could be projected as “innocent blunders”; but are believed to have been driven by vested interests. The question is whether Arvind Jadav was acting on his own or under orders. The exercise to merge Indian and Air India involving enormous expenditure has been a complete failure. Besides, profit-making routes have been surrendered and bilaterals restructured allegedly with devious intent to benefit private carriers. The much touted drive for membership of the supposedly prestigious Star Alliance has run aground. High value real estate owned by the airline is reported to have been sold or leased for a song allegedly to privileged beneficiaries. And worst of all, management-worker relationship has collapsed and employee morale has sunk to perhaps its lowest in its entire history. Air India, which was once upon a time the pride of the nation, is no longer the airline of preference in the country or abroad.

On assumption of office, the new CMD appears embarked on a complete overhaul of the airline’s management to put it back on track. To begin with, he has removed a number of senior functionaries in the airline appointed by his predecessor as “Officers on Special Duty” who were either controversial or whose presence was not in the best interests of the airline. In an effort at image makeover, he has stipulated a two-week deadline to flight operations and commercial departments to improve the quality of on-board service and on-time performance initially to 80 per cent going up to 93 per cent as an integral part of the turnaround plan. Other measures under active consideration as enunciated by Vayalar Ravi, Minister of Civil Aviation, are dumping of loss-making routes, rationalisation of projection of growth of fleet size from the current 124 to 245 aircraft by 2018-19 as against the earlier target of 248 by 2015-16, deployment of fuel-efficient aircraft on international routes and enhancement of aircraft utilisation rate. While Minister Ravi’s rejection of privatisation and job cuts would be music to the employees’ ears, what may not be palatable is the proposal to withdraw concessions currently available to distant relatives for travel by Air India on domestic routes.