Air India Maharaja will sell scraps to make ends meet
What's the story
Embattled state-run Air India now plans on vacating its unused hangar space at airports and sell out accumulated scrap to cut costs.
CMD Rajiv Bansal, who is at the helm of the disinvestment-bound Maharaja now, has been trying out ways to reduce Air India's financial burden, which includes improving On Time Performance (OTP), customer services and now selling scraps, space.
Here's more about it.
Bansal
What is it all about?
Bansal said in an interview, "I am finding that there is a lot of unused material lying in hangars and unnecessarily we are holding on. So we can get some money by selling the scrap and also save rentals by leaving the space."
Needless to say that these are the same exorbitant purchases and rentals that have reduced the Maharaja to a pauper now.
Delhi
These are prime locations
Majority of the space, that it owns, is in two of the busiest airports and costs AI a considerable amount of money.
"I noticed that in Delhi itself one aircraft which has been auctioned is lying in the hangar. Similarly, in Mumbai, steel scrap is lying and we are trying to dispose that off so that hangar space can be cleared," Bansal said.
Air India
There is a joke in here
Bansal said, "My priorities are OTP and customer experience. These are the two things from the passenger side and on the internal side we should make enough money. So must make money and spend less."
However, it'd probably be a losing battle trying to reverse the Rs. 50,000 crore debt, accrued via splurges and incompetence, and the present monthly shortfall of Rs. 400 crore.
DGCA
A continued lack of shame
Meanwhile, another deplorable incident has taken place in Air India's ever-expanding journal of shame.
Bansal has requested the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to have a "lenient view" towards the pilots and cabin crew, who had regularly put the safety of passengers at risk by skipping breath analyzer tests.
This has to be a new low reached by the Air India.
Maharaja
The Maharaja's downfall
As per the aviation regulator DGCA's safety rules, all pilots and cabin crew must undergo breath analyzer tests before and after flights. However, Air India pilots systematically evaded their breath analyzer tests on and from destinations.
Now Bansal says, "We are in full agreement to what they are saying" but "we have requested that they should take a lenient view on this matter."