Air India - Is it worth it to have a national airline ?

The Airline for freeloading FAT CATS !
30% of all seats on its flights are occupied by staff and their families traveling free.

“This is an unprecedented crisis,” a government official told The Indian Express. “There has to be drastic route rationalisation and cost cutting. Allowances and perks of Air India employees will be re-examined, which may result in an across-the-board reduction in benefits.”

Air India has over 33,000 employees on its rolls, with another 20,000 as contractual labour. Its annual wage bill, as per latest records, stood at Rs 4,000 crore. There are a host of benefits for its employees, which includes complementary travel on Air India’s business class. “It is estimated that 30 per cent of Air India flights are filled with its employees,” the official claimed. "

The Airline always exploited the sentiments NRIs and Indians by pressing their nationalistic and patriotic buttons to survive the past 60 years, while in reality is is a huge parasite monster.

Air India wants Rs 14,000 cr bailout

The Rs 15,000 crore Maharaja has sought a bailout package of Rs 14,000 crore from the government as Air India is likely to post a loss of around Rs 5,000 crore in 2008-09. The bailout amount has bloated by 250 per cent from what Air India demanded last year.

In a revised bailout proposal, the national carrier has asked for an equity infusion of around Rs 5,000 crore and a soft loan of Rs 7,000 crore. In addition, it has also demanded Rs 2,000 crore as grant from the government.

The proposal, finalised by Air India a week ago and submitted to the civil aviation ministry recently, was discussed by the ministry.

Last year, the carrier had asked for a Rs 2,750 crore soft loan and an equity infusion of Rs 1,231 crore. The finance ministry and department of public enterprises had then asked the ministry to draw up a plan to trim down holding firm National Aviation Company of India Limited’s operations and prepare a viable model for the next five years.

Well not only Air india but also Kingfisher, jet airwas, go air all the airline carrier companies are running in heavy loss ..

Air India enjoyed sole monopoly for 50 years..and still running on loss all the time.
With a bloated staff and inefficient unproductive management.

Kingfisher came in recently..less than 3 years ago..and its performance
and that of other private airlines are much much better and also
the loss they suffer is due to the global downturn in aviation travel.
They do not eat tax payers money and render shoddy poor service
as is the case with Air India and Indian Airlines.

Well Air india is not updating the aircrafts.. nor providing good service to the passengers... nothing thy are doing for their passengers..infact ppl prefer private airlines coz of their service only..