Addendum
Air India boss defends his staff as “the finest there is”
June 1st 2017
Air India chairman and managing director, Ashwani Lohani, does not accept criticism lightly. Besieged by complaints about the carrier’s dire financial performance, he has taken to Facebook to defend the company and its employees. Read More »
In a hard hitting post, Lohani laid the blame for his airline’s losses at the door of India’s previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, a coalition of centre-left political parties.
“Air India went down due to the ill-fated decision to merge government-owned Air India and domestic Indian Airlines in 2007. It was not destined to be and was coupled with many other wrong decisions by the regime,” he wrote.
As a result, the airline’s $7.5 billion debt is “insurmountable” and is “at the root of all the problems that manifest as symptoms to all and sundry”, he said.
Air India is surviving on a $4.7 billion government 10-year bailout package and is struggling to improve its financial position. For the current fiscal year, the government has allocated $280.1 million to the carrier. To date, it has received $3.75 billion in government support.
In its previous financial year, Air India posted an operating profit of $16.4 million, mainly as a result of lower fuel prices and improved passenger demand.
Lohani said the grim financial scenario “cannot be denied or wished away”, but accused many arm chair critics of “a gross lack of understanding of the issue” and of unfairly blaming the company and its employees for all of Air India’s woes.
He acknowledged that “gross mismanagement” at senior management levels of Air India had played a part in its rapid downward slide and questioned “the prudence of a government which appoints senior management functionaries” to such positions.
He stoutly defended his entire workforce, including pilots and engineers, and said it needs to be appreciated that Air India always had and still has “the finest employees be it pilots, cabin crew, engineers or the rest”.
