Air India
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History
1950s-1970s: glory days
[http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31808&articlexml=WHEN-THE-MAHARAJA-WAS-GLAM-16072017013030 Joeanna Rebello Fernandes|WHEN THE MAHARAJA WAS GLAM|Jul 16 2017 : The Times of India (Delhi)]
Now reduced to scrimping on meals, Air India was once the pinnacle of luxury travel. A look back at the days when Indians clicked photos with the Maharaja and washed down caviar with champagne The 1950s streets of Bombay glow phosphorescently in the dark as Mitter Bedi bikes from his Colaba studio to the airport in Santa Cruz. He goes into the terminal and sets to work. First in is a clan saying their goodbyes to a Londonbound son. Bedi shepherds them to an Air India logo, encourages them to relax and smile, and shoots. The airline's official photographer, Bedi spends his nights capturing that exotic species -the flying Indian. Air India, which has now been put on the block by the government, stood for something entirely different back then. The brand and product collaborated to give travellers the `magic carpet service', in the words of Bobby Kooka, Air India's commercial director and creator of its `Maharaja'.
Passengers arrived in style, in Chantilly lace saris, sky-high bouffants, doublebreasted suits and Bond Street brogues.First-timers came with families, with garlands and auspicious coconuts for a safe crossing. “People were photographed at the airport because flying at the time was so rare,“ says Sarla Bedi, Mitter's wife, “The photographs would later appear in newspaper supplements and families who desired a copy would have to get it from the newspaper.“
In the early `70s, travel writer Gustasp Irani made his first trip to the US on Air India. “My sister moved to the States, and I was sent a free Economy ticket. Even there people dressed up, and I remember wondering how the scruffy guy next to me managed to get in!' First-time fliers were initiated into AI etiquette with an illustrated booklet called `Better Acquainted', which dwelled on topics like dress-code, ticket cancellation, bathroom manners, and baggage allowance. Sample this: `When you fly with us, it is not necessary to dress like Trader Horn or Theodore Roosevelt on the eve of a visit to the Dark Continent. A safari has its points but mountains of bedding, snack-bite (sic) ointment and Man Friday at your elbow are not required.“
Irani travelled light, with no more than $8 in foreign exchange. So when a trolley selling miniature bottles of alcohol rolled past, Irani had to glumly watch it pass. “I only managed a drink when we were given a voucher, after stopping to refuel in Frankfurt,“ he says.
Naturally, the red carpet was laid thicker in First Class where the water for scotch cascaded from silver carafes. A 1960s First Class menu on the Boeing 707 was a roll-call of the finest: for hors d'oeuvres, caviar Malossol sur glace (Malossol caviar on ice) and pate de foie gras Strasbourg (Strasbourg goose liver paste); entrees included filet mignon. There was a generous cheese platter, and vermouth, sherry and champagne to wash it down.Today , their equivalents are shahi paneer, babycorn korma and palak kofta. Prawn, lamb and chicken are now available only on long-haul flights. Domestic passengers travelling short distances in Economy have been force-fed vegetarianism to ostensibly help Air India economise.
“Food was an important element of our service,“ says Firdausi Jussawalla, former deputy commercial director with the airline. “We had chefs from Centaur hotels (owned by AI's subsidiary Hotel Corporation of India) and the Taj Hotel help plan the menu,“ he says.
The now-much-travelled Gustasp Irani recalls how people lit up their cigarettes as soon as the No Smoking sign went off, which was even before the seatbelt sign went off! If you ran out of sticks, you could buy a carton on board. His sister was an air hostess till she got married (as was the rule until the late `70s), and he remembers the time JRD Tata was on the flight. The chairman (and founder) of the airline called his sister and told her to convey a message to the pilot: `You were six minutes too long on the runway'.
From the '50s to the '70s you travelled Air India in equal parts for the flight and the destination, unlike today, when most airlines are a purgatorial means to an end. “As a passenger you felt so welcome and wanted,“ says Bobby Sista, who helmed Sista Advertising until the '90s. Air India's fleet was growing; having distinguished itself as the world's first all-jet airline in June 1962, a decade later in 1971 it acquired its first Jumbo Jet, the Boeing 747. Sara Kapoor (name changed) joined Air India that year. It was the movie life for young people at the time, a chance to travel the world and live in posh hotels, and shop abroad.
These air hostesses were a glamorous set, some even featured in consumer product ads. A promotional film from 1962 called them `shimmering shepherdesses' and showed them gliding down the aisle in their silks, offering passengers hot towels and boiled candy . “Most of the passengers flying Air India in the '60s and '70s were businessmen, film stars, or people travelling to meet relatives,“ says Kapoor.
Meanwhile, on his return journey from America, Gustasp Irani had about as much luck as on his outward trip. “The Air India flight had stopped in Delhi. My co-passenger, being a domestic traveller, wasn't allowed to buy a whiskey . He requested me to buy two for him, which I did, thinking he'd let me have one. What he did, though, was down the first in one gulp, and then nurse the second.“
Irregularities
2004-14: Purchase of aircraft
Neeraj Chauhan, `Blatant irregularities crashed Air India', May 31, 2017: The Times of India
Airline Bought 111 Planes For Rs 70,000Cr When Its Profit Was Just Rs 100Cr, Reveal CBI FIRs
The Central Bureau of Investigation's three FIRs in the `Air India scam', which took place during the UPA regime, have alleged blatant irregularities that hastened the downfall of the national carrier.
The FIRs, accessed by TOI, said the civil aviation ministry decided to purchase 111aircraft for Air India costing about Rs 70,000 crore at a time when the airline was showing a profit of about Rs 100 crore and didn't have the capacity to purchase even a few aircraft. Due to this particular decision, the airline immediately went into huge losses, which increased every year to reach tens of thousands of crores, the CBI said, quoting from the allegation levelled by activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan in his PIL before the Supreme Court.
The FIRs mentioned an internal Air India report of 2000-01 which said the airline should only lease aircraft and not go for purchase.The view was overruled by the aviation ministry , the FIR said, quoting from Bhushan's allegations which led the SC to direct a CBI probe.
It was decided in 2004-05 that Air India will buy 68 aircraft instead of 28, as originally planned, a decision which quadrupled the expenditure from Rs 10,000 crore, as originally estimated, to Rs 44,000 crore. This apart, the government also decided to buy 43 planes for Indian Airlines at a cost of Rs 8,399 crore.
“Concerns regarding potential difficulties of Indian Airlines in successfully funding the acquisition process with a positive NPV (net present value) was raised within civil aviation ministry , but were ignored,“ the CBI FIR said, referring to one of the main allegations which led the court to direct the CBI to probe the alleged scam.
Interestingly , the CBI said the acquisition programme had been under consideration since 1996 but never got traction, until 2004 when it suddenly picked up speed. “Between August 2004 and December 2005, the proposals were formulated by Air India, approved by its board, examined and approved by ministry , Planning Commission, department of expenditure, group of ministers and the cabinet,“ the FIR said.
Not just that, Air India signed the contract with Boeing to buy 68 aircraft on the same day , December 30, 2005, that the government cleared the purchase order.
The CBI said NACIL (National Aviation Company of India Ltd), incorporated to merge Indian Airlines and Air India, had an equity base of only Rs 145 crore, yet it made a commitment to pay Rs 44,000 crore for procuring 111new aircraft. It said loans for the purchase were taken from US and Indian banks, pushing the airline into debt and huge losses.
Similarly, the CBI FIR into the leasing of planes said the ministry and officials of Air IndiaIndian Airlines decided to lease planes “dishonestly without due considerations regarding proper route study and marketing or price strategy“.
“The leasing was done despite airline running with very low load because of largescale aircraft acquisition and several flights, especially overseas flights running almost empty at a huge loss,“ the CBI said.
For example, Air India leased 15 expensive planes when it did not have pilots to fly the aircraft, the FIR said, emphasising that this was “known to everyone“.
In another instance of alleged irregularity , Air India dry leased four Boeing 777s for a period of five years in 2006 even when new planes for the airline were set to arrive in July 2007.
This “resulted in five Boeing 777s and five Boeing 737s standing idle, leading to an estimated loss of Rs 840 crore during 2007-2009“, the CBI said.
The third FIR to probe Air India giving up profitable routes and schedules for private airlines alleged that “foreign airlines were given unrestricted entry into India and major routes were given to them without taking any reciprocal benefits“.
Air India gave up Kolkata-Bangkok, Kolkata-Dhaka, Doha-Kochi, Kochi-Kuwait and domestic routes like Ahmedbad-Jaipur, MumbaiVadodara, Pune-Goa and MumbaiPatna and others.
“On all these routes, private airlines like Jet Airways, Kingfisher, Go Air, Indigo, Spicejet, Paramount Airways etc started operating and made profits,“ the FIR said.
On lucrative routes like Mumbai-Dubai and Mumbai-Doha, Air India reduced its flights and gave private airlines major market share, it added.
Longest flights
Delhi- San Francisco: 15,300 kilometres in 14.5 hours
Junks Atlantic Route, Covers Longer Distance Than Any Other Flight
Flying Delhi to San Francisco (SFO) over the Pacific Ocean instead of the Atlantic, as it had done till last week, has earned Air India the record of operating the world's longest nonstop flight.
The Pacific route is almost 1,400km longer than the Atlantic one, and the flight covered 15,300 kilometres in 14.5 hours.Despite the route being longer, the flight took almost two hours less thanks to tailwinds -winds that blow in the same direction as an aircraft and thus make it go faster.
“The Earth rotates from west to east, and winds flow in that direction too. Flying west means facing strong headwinds (that decreases an aircraft's actual ground speed), and flying east means getting strong tailwinds, which does the opposite,“ said a senior AI official. “While taking the (western) Atlantic route to SFO, we usually face headwinds of 24kmph. This means that if our aircraft is doing 800kmph, its actual ground speed is 776kmph. Taking the (eastern) Pacific route will mean getting tailwinds of 138kmph, which make the aircraft have an actual ground speed of 938kmph,“ the official added.
At 13,900km, the Atlantic route of AI's Delhi-SFO nons top flight made it the world's second-longest after Emirates' Dubai-Auckland (14,120km). Now, AI's Pacific route will remain the world's longest nonstop for two years, till Singapore Airlines launches the mother of all direct flights -Singapore-New York -that will cover 16,500km in 19 hours (see box). The four pilots, captains Rajneesh Sharma, Gautam Verma, MA Khan and SM Palekar, and the 10 cabin crew members who operated the first Delhi-SFO flight over the Pacific are ecstatic at setting this record.
“The aircraft took off from Delhi at 4am on Sunday (October 16) morning. We were in that date till Japan. After that, we crossed the international date line and were in October 15. By the time we landed in San Francisco, it was 6.30am on October 16 (local time in SFO),“ said one of the pilots.
The AI Delhi-SFO-Delhi flight now does a round trip of the world as it flies back to India over the Atlantic to get tailwinds on both the outbound and inbound flights.
The Boeing-777 200 long range used by AI on this route, on an average, burns 9,600 litres of fuel for each hour of flying. A shorter flying time on the Delhi-SFO route -by an hour in summer to three hours in winter -would mean huge fuel savings for the airline.
On-time performance
2007-16
See graphic:
Air India’s losses, 2007-16
2016: third worst in the world
AI ranked world's 3rd worst performer, co disagrees Jan 10 2017 : The Times of India
A report published by data services company FlightStats ranked the airline as the third worst global performer in terms of on-time performance (OTP) in 2016.
2017: AI starts selling land in 13 cities
AI starts selling land in 13 cities, August 26, 2017: The Times of India
Air India has started to sell its land in 13 cities, including a prime land on Anna Salai here where it was once planning to build its city office. The land will be up for bidding soon.
The airline has decided to do an e-auction of properties at Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Goa, Lucknow, Bhuj, Nasik, Pune, Trivandrum, Gurugram and Gwalior. Most of the property are office blocks, land for residential blocks, flats and other assets.
The land and property are being auctioned as part of monetisation of assets plan which kicked in after the Cabinet cleared disinvestment of the airline. “Though the airline may be making money , the loan burden will pull down the value and will discourage investors,“ Aviation minister Ashok Gajapati Raju said.
Personnel issues
Resignation of pilots, 2012-15
See graphic
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