Air India told to exit loss-making routes

Saying Air India should cut on the number of loss-making routes, minister for civil aviation Praful Patel said on Wednesday the government will not interfere on a daily basis in the national carrier's functioning.

"We will support every move of the carrier. But we also expect equal commitment from employees of the airline. The government will not advise Air India on a daily basis. They (the airline) will have to decide everything," Patel said at the launch of India Aviation 2020, scheduled from March 3 to 7 nest year in Hyderabad.

The minister said AI should transform top-level management, the organisation and operations and cut loss-making routes.

The minister, while speaking at the event organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi on Wednesday, said the problems at AI did not come up overnight.

The airline's high-cost structure and the compulsions of being a public sector unit had been the reasons and it had been making a loss, he said. AI is to incur a loss of over Rs 7,000 crore (Rs 70 billion) this fiscal year. The government had asked the airline to come up with a restructuring plan in 30 days.

SBI Caps to submit report this week

The airline had asked SBI Caps to prepare a report. It is to come this week and a committee of secretaries will discuss it in a meeting on Saturday.

"The world is migrating from a full-service carrier to a low-cost carrier regime. We are also in that phase and once that happens, aviation in India will see a huge growth," said Patel.

To fill vacancies in Air Traffic Control, the ministry is planning to approach retired personnel from the defence forces, as well as retired professionals from the civilian side, on contract.