The Indian government has been trying to privatize Air India since a very long time due to its inability to manage it because of the red tapes and dirty politics of Indian authorities. With huge monetary loss and dissatisfaction of the travellers, Air India is facing big time financial and economic crises.
According to the passengers, the service is poor, when called to its offices, calls are routed to different persons, and then dropped, the representatives even don’t want to call back the passengers. Seats are broken, emergency equipment are lying on the floors, floors are dirty, food served is not to the standard of international passenger’s standard and video screens are not working, restrooms are broken and many other problems that international passengers are facing with the Air India.
Air India is the flag carrier airline of India, headquartered at New Delhi. It is owned by Air India Limited, a government-owned enterprise, and operates a fleet of Airbus and Boeing aircraft serving 94 domestic and international destinations. The airline was founded by J.R.D Tata, as Tata Airlines in 1932 and was later centralised and renamed as “Air India”. Since 2001 attempts were made to privatize Air India and from 2006 onwards, it suffered losses after its merger with Indian Airlines.
Indian Airlines and Air India’s retired employees haven’t been paid their dues and rears. Pilots are waiting for the rears and raises for years and years, even the tickets are very expensive as compared to the other international airlines, but still the services are very poor compared to the other airlines.
With a debt of USD $12 billion it leaves no other option for Air India to sell it’s shares and opt for privatization. The process however is complicated and needs cooperation of the employees in order to complete the process, but the main hurdle is the government and its corrupt officials and ministers, who want to take back door bribes to sell it or to improve the services.
Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri was said to be at a meeting with some 13 Air India unions for discussions regarding the privatization process. Puri also said that the government was trying to address the concerns of the employees regarding issues such as job protection post privatization and pending remunerations if any.
Amid media reports regarding disinvestment and privatization of Air India, there are also rumours regarding complete shutdown of the company. However, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Air India (AI) Ashwani Lohani on Saturday dismissed the rumours regarding the shutting down or closing operations of the public carrier. “Rumours regarding Air India shutting down or closing operations, are baseless. AI would continue to fly and expand,” said Lohani in a statement. Asserting that the national carrier is still India’s biggest airline, he said that there should be “no cause for concern to travellers, corporates or agents.”
Frequent travellers of Air India, in an interview with chief editor of global messenger have stated the unpleasant conditions of the flights. “The seats were broken, uncomfortable and with pale covers, the floor was not properly cleaned, and it felt untidy as I sat inside”, a traveller said.
In another interview one of the internationally well-known and recognized passenger was visiting from the United States to India and he need to extend his tickets, he called the Airlines offices located in India, he was asked to pay some fees, he agreed to, but his ticket was not extended. He has shown emails to our Global Messenger’s staff, where the airline stopped responding to his emails. He needed to buy a new ticket and was not given any reason that why the airline didn’t extend his ticket. This happened in November 2019 and the passenger needed to buy another ticket for the first week of December 2019.
In another instance one of the passenger told us that one time in September 2019, when he arrived at the New Delhi airport, airline staff told him and to the other passengers that flight has been cancelled without any reason in the midnight and many international passengers travelled from Punjab, Haryana and as far as from Gujrat to travel to the United States of America. It is understandable that Air India provides flights special flights to Indian’s prime minister, president and other ministers and keeps at least two of its fleet planes on standby, but where is the fault of passengers, who buy air tickets in more than $1,200.00, while Chinese airlines sell their tickets to India in less than $600.00. Now issue comes that how the Air India is going into losses, while its rates are double and international flights are full of passengers. Is there misleading information for the public or ministers or government officials are involved in damaging Air India’s reputation and are involved to shut down it?
Recently, due to extreme flight delay, things turned out to be ugly for Air India on Delhi’s IGI airport. 294 passengers created a ruckus onboard and tried opening the aircraft’s doors by force. In a few videos that have surfaced on social media, the group of passengers can be seen threatening the flight crew. The flight 865, was scheduled to depart at 10 am on January 3, from Delhi and instead flew out at 5:59 pm. Meanwhile, passengers claimed that they did not receive any information about the reasons for the delay or when they would get to fly out. There have been many such reports and feedbacks from unsatisfied customers who took services of Air India.
The cause is clearly monetary losses and inability of revival. “The minister said that Air India has a debt of Rs 80,000 crore and no expert has solution to that. In this situation, privatization is the only choice left for the government.”
One of the passengers from the United States of America has posted on his Facebook page the broken seats, broken toilets, falling oxygen masks, on the ground fallen oxygen masks and much more and this unsatisfied passenger even mentioned that the screens were broken no videos were working and the crew was rude when asked for water or sodas. Sandwiches were left in the food warming aisles and passengers could pick by themselves.
Even Air India’s planes are used to transport Indian authorities abroad including the ambassadors and consulate officials, passengers are concerned that are there some special planes for these authorities or do the travel in these dirty planes with broken seats.
