Air India: Three Years Hence

Air India, under Tata ownership, shows mixed progress with improved passenger numbers but ongoing safety and service issues raise concerns.

January 27 was a big day for India’s erstwhile national carrier Air India and the Tata group’s rekindled ambitions in the airline space. It was three years ago on that day that the Tata’s took back the reins of the beleaguered carrier , founded by the group in October 1932 , to effect a turnaround that would take Air India back to its previous glory.

Former CMD of Air India Vishwapati Tridevi echoed this sentiment while quoting Shakespeare :”Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and the Tatas can see Air India’s intrinsic value” (REUTERS)

At the time of sale, former finance and aviation secretary Ashok Chawla remarked that Air India was once the “crown jewel” not just of India but of the global skies. He further added that although it sadly lost its “exalted position”, there was no reason why with the correct handling, it could re-enter the “hall of fame”. Former CMD of Air India Vishwapati Tridevi echoed this sentiment while quoting Shakespeare :”Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and the Tatas can see Air India’s intrinsic value”.

What the Tata group Inherited

As things turned out, Air India turned out to be in worse shape than the Tatas anticipated. At the time of takeover, the airline had a debt of ₹61,000 crore, seemed set on a relentless path of deterioration, was proving to be an unending annual drain on the exchequer, and boasted a market share that was a fraction of what it had been in the airline’s glory days. Service standards had plummeted as had its employee morale. The airline’s aircraft reflected its overall condition: jaded, shabby and uncared for. Over 30 aircraft in its fleet were grounded and many others were in poor shape. Broken seats, non-functioning entertainment systems even in business and first class, and dirty toilets have been par for the course even for the last three years. Fliers, who have limited options, were resigned to their fate.

But perhaps where the greatest lacunae were found and documented in a July 2021 report - a copy of which is available with this writer - was in the carrier’s safety and quality reviews done prior to the buy .

Recommendations of courts of inquiry into accidents had been systematically ignored and as a result subsequent incidents/accidents had not been averted. The airline was carrying out quality assurance audits where they were not needed but did not carry them out when they were required. Flight data monitoring was found to be inadequate in terms of both data collection and analysis and therefore could not be used to effect changes in operations that could prevent a recurrence of incidents. “In general, we found that time and resources were often wasted in non-essential programs that were good only for the optics”, said a person associated with the report on the matter that was submitted at the time.

The More Things Change…

Although one is yet to see the final consolidated impact, many changes, big and small, have been instituted by the new management. Besides the two mergers -- Air India with Vistara and Air India Express with AirAsia India -- and a massive new aircraft order, several smaller changes were implemented, some of which are beginning to bear results.

This has been possible as the airline has shown a significant pick up in the number of passengers carried, up by 33%. The airline was able to get 90 % of its long-grounded aircraft flying again. And aircraft have been better utilised. In just one year, the airline improved its aircraft hours flown dramatically : up from 2382 hours flown per aircraft in 2021-22 to 3661 per aircraft in 2022-23. The total destinations flown to have increased as have the frequency of flights.

There’s been a 24% growth in consolidated revenues and the available seat kilometers has risen by 21%. The airline has added capacity by over 20% by taking delivery of an additional 49 aircraft and by getting old grounded aircraft back in the air. There’s been an over 450 basis points improvement in its loads and a 27% growth in the number of passengers carried. Freight too has picked up.

All this has translated into lower losses, a big achievement for an airline shedding its public sector avatar. In its first full fiscal year under Tata ownership, FY23, the airline reported a loss of ₹11,387 crore, up 18.6 % from the previous fiscal year, FY22. Revenue numbers as per data submitted to the DGCA shows that the airline registered a sharp increase in operating revenue -- from ₹17, 000-odd crore to ₹31,377 crore in the year. But with operating expenses outstripping revenue, the airline remained in loss.

Ruffling many feathers in the organisation, dramatic changes have been made to the airline’s employee base with many new hires. One aim was to shed the previous old image of a tired, ageing carrier to one that is younger, smarter and hipper. The addition of 9000-odd new employees helped the airline bring its average age down from 54 to 35 while the average age of cabin crew is 28. Technology improved the working and efficiency of the organisation in more ways than one, reducing the scope for discretion.

The More They Stay the Same…

Observers and insiders said that the focus of the present management team has been excessively on the more visible and outwardly aspects while many of the critical aspects -- operations, safety, training and maintenance -- are not yet what is expected in an airline that is aiming to be among the best in the world. They add that while most of the hardware issues have been addressed, the airline was still behind competitors in some softer aspects such as service delivery and on-board service .

While investments in people and technology, two key aspects, have been tackled, the product on the long haul is far from what Emirates or some of the other competitors offer. Several addressable aspects -- like improved cutlery and crockery, food quality, cleanliness on board -- are not yet on par with the world’s best.

More worryingly, safety remains the biggest concern with several incidents tainting the airline’s safety record even after the sale. As recently as on January 5, an Air India flight from Bengaluru to Delhi made an emergency landing after one of the engines stalled mid-air, a major maintenance failure. Prior to this in October 2024, an Air India Express flight headed for Trichy gripped national attention as it developed technical snag with its landing gear and the airport was prepared for an emergency landing. In July 2024, an Air India aircraft bound for the US made an emergency landing in Russia after the crew discovered an activated smoke detector. This is just one of many such instances the airline has been beset with in 2023 and 2024. “If they had managed to plug these gaps, such incidents should not occur at all”, said a former DGCA official on condition of anonymity.

The airline, however, maintains that Air India is also one of the world’s first airlines to have successfully completed a ‘risk-based’ IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA), a global benchmark in aviation safety in 2024. The new risk-based model delivers an audit scope that is tailored for each airline, focusing on airline-specific safety risks, rather than applying a ‘one-size-fits-all approach’.

If maintenance has not been up to the required speed, the training of new captains and co-pilots has been a cause of concern and DGCA and the airline have been at loggerheads on this for most of 2024. It is alleged by both insiders and DGCA officials that training requirements and standards for Air India pilots have been slipping and are not at par with most other airlines.

In August 2024, the DGCA fined the airline ₹90 lakh after it found violations of training norms and the flight being operated by non-qualified crew. The airline’s director of operations and director of training were fined individually too. Prior to this in January 2024 too, the airline was fined by DGCA for safety violations and a show cause notice had been issued to the airline’s accountable manager.

The airline at the time had disagreed on record with the DGCA findings. It has consistently maintained that the training of pilots at Air India is in compliance with regulatory requirements and that the process of selecting trainers is also part of the DGCA-approved training manual. The airline has repeatedly said that “Flying is a serious profession, and as India’s most experienced airline, Air India prides itself on having robust operational management and control systems with a track record in meeting the most rigorous safety standards.” It adds that the carrier’s trainee pilots are released as co-pilots only after they have flown under supervision of qualified trainers for adequate duration and successfully completed training/check sessions on the simulator. They are authorised to perform take-offs and landings only if their performance is found satisfactory on all parameters, according to an airline spokesperson.

Despite the airline’s claims, these kinds of transgressions have continued. In December 2024, a show cause notice was issued by DGCA to three Air India operations team members for allowing crew to operate without meeting the mandatory requirements for operating and a further penalty of ₹30 lakh has been demanded through an order issued on January 29th 2025. The airline did not reply to the queries until the piece was published.

More worryingly, airline insiders said that what we are seeing today did not happen overnight and has been building up for a few years. “There is a very thin line in being able to fly, competent to fly and confident to fly”, explained one senior commander. He argued that many co-pilots and even recent commanders are technically qualified and able to fly but many of them may falter in tricky situations and take the wrong calls and cannot be called wholly “competent”.

“You can be called competent if you take the right call in almost eight out of 10 tricky situations but would you call someone who is unsure or takes many wrong calls competent? I wouldn’t”, he explained. Confidence, he said, only comes with years of experience and hours of flying. A confident commander knows that he can tackle the situation no matter what it demands and is almost certain he can do so without compromising his passenger’s safety.

A second area of disappointment if not concern has been the tardy pace of change. A top ministry of civil aviation official, who was involved in the sale, said that the government has been disappointed with the pace of change and had expected the turnaround to be effected much quicker since resources were no longer a constraint ; most expected that the private sector player would bring in the urgency that government typically lacks. But in reality, the progress has been slow. “Too many pieces of the puzzle are not yet in place and this is surprising given the fact that the Tata’s have a free rein”, he said.

Any criticism of the airline’s offerings is quickly blamed by the management on “old, poor-quality aircraft” and while this may be partly true, it doesn’t explain why the aircraft are often unclean or why there is no semblance of efficiency in the airline’s boarding procedures and other operational aspects. “There is no clear leadership of the airport ground services vertical”, says a senior airline source and this he says explains why the chaos prevails.

Overall, senior commanders and insiders said that the focus of the new management is excessively on introducing “more and more apps” instead of the core operations : scheduling, rostering and improving the on board offering.

From a passenger point of view, Tata’s failure to present a viable and much anticipated alternative to IndiGo on domestic routes and to foreign carriers like Emirates, SIA and others on foreign ones remains a matter of dismay and regret. In the hearts and minds of many Indians, Air India remains their first and preferred choice, so the sooner it gets its act in place, the better it will be for all concerned including perhaps its biggest rival.