Murdering customer service.
I read the article with interest. I am a part of the flying public for the past 21 years. At first i would like to begin by saying, that both Air India as well as Indian Airlines were one of the most pathetic choices to fly even before private aviation started. They continue to be a pathetic product and instead of trying to change and become more efficient they resist change across the board (staff, crew, management across the board). While the IC crew are protesting I don't see the AI brothers and sisters standing by them. It is a known fact that both airlines are the fiefdom of people and unions that have run them and have one of the worst employee to aircraft ratio.
It most definitely is a political horse also and a tool of corruption which unfortunately seems to have crept in to the employees. In the 80's/90's the amount of minibar and duty free freebies that the crew used to dwell of and how they used to find their way to the market is open news to all. I stopped flying them for better choices so do not know if this still happens.
In free enterprise all gloves off to make things happen is the mantra. Each one of your points is speculative and while there is definitely political patronage in India, I as a flying customer personally think Gopi was a dreamer and a business model that was not sustainable in this country. Much like the name 360 his current business will go around in circles too. Considering it is 3 years old not much is heard of his planes flying regularly. I think his ego was writing checks his business model could not cash. The only writing on the wall he saw was an end game failure to his business and he sold out quite profitably. If you review the stock market price you will see what a blunder VM made as his ego got in the way of his business pride. If left on it's own Deccan would have run out of money and faded into oblivion leaving KF more cash rich than poor currently. Something maybe that should happen to the national carrier.
IC was turned around and probably a huge blunder to merge without fixing the rot in AI first. However please note that IC was turned around due to the competition that emerged locally and strong which it was forced to do so. AI needed competition and that is the model of free market enterprise. Removing profitable routes not acceptable but I did not see the numbers on these routes to validate that.
Now instead of asking a bankrupt airline for more money you should be asking all those in AI to take a paycut, pull up their socks and get more competitive and post profitability where good money paying people actually want to fly you, then ask for incentive based raises.
Oh yes and before we forget do push to privatize and push the idiotic babus and their appointees out. that would be a good start.
As for Ambanis...........you need to read history a little bit more about them. 2g, political buy outs and billion dollar successes in India today are not done without wielding probably the largest money chest, even more than VM, and bhatia. Damn the Ambanis do have a well oiled for
PR if they can convince all that they are saints.
