dlcmdrx, the airline industry in India is quite complicated but let me take a stab at it. In their prior avatar, Air India and Indian Airlines were government run with the former serving international routes and the latter serving the domestic sector. In the face of increasing competition from private airlines, they were both merged under the Air India brand.
To make a long story short, both were run along extremely bureaucratic lines and when they merged, a turf war erupted between their erstwhile employees and, amongst other grievances, this one involves who gets to fly the 787. And the fact that the politicians run the airline like their personal fiefdom (the former civil aviation minister's daughter had a A319 flying to her destination switched to an A320 in the last minute because there were not enough first class seats to accommodate her retinue) makes the twists and turns in the sordid goings-on worthy of a Bollywood pot-boiler.
I would like to sit back and enjoy all of them committing hara-kiri, but the fact that my tax money keeps this manger, which wouldn't survive a day in it's present form if it were privatized, under life-support makes it more of a tear-jerker for me than a Akira Kurosawa movie.