Air India in doldrums
Thursday - December 5, 2019 11:25 am ,
Category : WTN SPECIAL
WTN- India’s national carrier and pride of the country Air India is staring at a bleak future. In 87 years of its service it has never seen times worse than this. But the downfall was imminent. Gross mismanagement, poor service, corruption etc. have become synonymous with the company in the last ten years or so. Even till the early 2000s it was a leading carrier, both by number of passengers and the number of aircraft it had.
Air India was known to operate in far flung and underserved areas – in the most remote and small airports, to connect every part of India. Years before private companies started giving it a tough competition, Air India (then Indian Airlines) provided the only air connectivity to the people. It was one of the first companies to have an enviable fleet of the double deck Boeing 747s. It was the only carrier to connect India to the world, right from the 1930s, serving several important cities like London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Singapore and Bangkok among others. Air India was pressed into service during every crisis people faced from political or natural calamities.
During the Gulf War for instance, Air India carried a record number of passengers stuck in Kuwait and brought them safely to India. But with the dawn of the millennium, the dominance and aura of Air India started fading in front of more efficient and cheaper airlines coming in the fray. They invested heavily on their services, infrastructure, training and upkeep, providing to Indians a new standard and template of flying experience they had never had before.
Air India, due to the red tape tardiness, failed to catch up and took things too easy. Its nemesis was written from thereon. Every passing year, its resources depleted, its fortunes fell and people lost trust. Loyal fliers started moving away to fly Jet Airways or Indigo Airlines. They were pampered with a whole new world of experience and Air India did nothing to wake up to the reality. Minor shakeups and cosmetic changes for short-term gains were initiated from time to time but they were all cases of too little too late.
By now its finances were already in the red. The top management was clueless and reckless. MDs kept on changing and pilots kept on leaving for more lucrative options. Then a plethora of incidents like pilots dozing off in flight, bad food, squabbles in the cabin, rodent infestation, delays and cancellations, technical snags, emergency landings, some odd mishaps etc. further sealed its fate as they became regular occurrences and robbed AI of the prestige and credibility it had.
When there was time and possibility to mend the ways, no one bothered and now there is not even a taker to revive the company, such eroded it stands today. The most likely possibility is that it will have to simply shut down. In that we would be faring worse than Biman Bangladesh or Pakistan International Airlines.- Window To News
Air India was known to operate in far flung and underserved areas – in the most remote and small airports, to connect every part of India. Years before private companies started giving it a tough competition, Air India (then Indian Airlines) provided the only air connectivity to the people. It was one of the first companies to have an enviable fleet of the double deck Boeing 747s. It was the only carrier to connect India to the world, right from the 1930s, serving several important cities like London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Singapore and Bangkok among others. Air India was pressed into service during every crisis people faced from political or natural calamities.
During the Gulf War for instance, Air India carried a record number of passengers stuck in Kuwait and brought them safely to India. But with the dawn of the millennium, the dominance and aura of Air India started fading in front of more efficient and cheaper airlines coming in the fray. They invested heavily on their services, infrastructure, training and upkeep, providing to Indians a new standard and template of flying experience they had never had before.
Air India, due to the red tape tardiness, failed to catch up and took things too easy. Its nemesis was written from thereon. Every passing year, its resources depleted, its fortunes fell and people lost trust. Loyal fliers started moving away to fly Jet Airways or Indigo Airlines. They were pampered with a whole new world of experience and Air India did nothing to wake up to the reality. Minor shakeups and cosmetic changes for short-term gains were initiated from time to time but they were all cases of too little too late.
By now its finances were already in the red. The top management was clueless and reckless. MDs kept on changing and pilots kept on leaving for more lucrative options. Then a plethora of incidents like pilots dozing off in flight, bad food, squabbles in the cabin, rodent infestation, delays and cancellations, technical snags, emergency landings, some odd mishaps etc. further sealed its fate as they became regular occurrences and robbed AI of the prestige and credibility it had.
When there was time and possibility to mend the ways, no one bothered and now there is not even a taker to revive the company, such eroded it stands today. The most likely possibility is that it will have to simply shut down. In that we would be faring worse than Biman Bangladesh or Pakistan International Airlines.- Window To News
