Air India's losses today total a staggering 7000 crores. That's after the
merger between the two government-owned airlines: Air India and Indian
Airlines. A trail of applications under the Right to Information Act shows
careless management for both.
Consider this. Indian Airlines committed to sending 66 senior pilots to the
United Kingdom for special training with a company called Storm Aviation. But
after 10 pilots completed their training, Indian Airlines pulled out,
supposedly to save money. That proved to be an expensive mistake. Storm
Aviation took the airline to court. Finally, Indian Airlines paid 2.5 crores as
an out-of-court settlement.
A sort of secret that has been uncovered by Subhash Chandra, who wanted to
investigate the mismanagement that has contributed to Air India's financial
crisis. After he discovered the Storm aviation disaster, he got another
tip-off: "After filing the RTI, I got a message from an insider asking me to
file additional RTIs asking about CARIBJET". This is what he uncovered. In
1995, Air-India leased three passenger aircrafts for several hundred crores
from CARIBJET, a foreign company.
The contract was for 3 years, but within months, the planes developed serious
technical issues. Their engines shut down mid-air, their gears were defective.
Despite that, it was Air India who had to buy its way out of the contract. For
a whopping 130 crores.
''I am aware of this and we had operated the aircraft for two years of the
three-year lease period. But it was during the financial crisis, so we decided
to end the contract one year early,'' says Jitendra Bhargava, Executive
Director, Air-India.
But despite the financial crisis that executives quote, freebies were being
handed out casually.
Last December, another RTI application revealed that Air-India gave nearly 400
free tickets worth crores to four senior members in the 90s. Even today,
families of senior officials are entitled to free domestic and international
tickets.
It's not just immediate family members who're eligible: parents, siblings,
sons-in-law and daughters-in-law also qualify.
Is the Government planning to bail out Air India at Tax payers cost.
Leslie Almeida
