The Maharaja's Worth For Bidders!

The national carrier has many takeaways and the government expects the bidders to pay for the good as well as the bad. It is a package deal, agreed. But as bidders find the conditions of the stake sale onerous, the government has come half-way to say that it is willing to change terms.

The ambitious disinvestment of national carrier Air India and its two subsidiaries seem to be hitting air pockets, despite the government receiving a “lot of queries” from both airlines and non-airlines for the proposed privatisation of the Maharaja. According to the latest thinking, all forms of commercial partnership, including codeshare and interline agreements, would be allowed between Air India and a selected bidder’s existing airlines.

Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey said the government intended to make the divestment process “faster”, but made it clear in a poser that Air India’s operations would not be split in the bidding process. The question, however, is whether the bidders are willing to pay for the bad along with the good, which the government expects.

For any bidder, Air India’s value lies in its flight slots (take off, landing, hangers), both in India and in its international operations, and its bilaterals. In US/Canada and Europe, Air India has 72 landing slots each, 70 in the UK, 280 in the Gulf and the Middle East. Its market share (though it is far from its glory days) is also not too bad: 12 percent domestic, and 17 percent in the India-International flights. The fleet is a mix of narrowbodies and widebodies, both Airbus and Boeing, and a mix of new and old planes. And the people too are a mix. It has some good and experienced staff, but it also has a bad people to aircraft ratio compared to its peers, and also a lot of mediocre staffand adamant unions. Its operational efficiency is not great either.