Air India - Mind Your P's

Air India needs rigorous training and a cultural transformation to shed its natural sloth

- Captain G.rR Gopinath

THE TATAS ACQUIRED Air India last year after losing it nearly seven decades ago. She was an enchanting princess when the government snatched her through nationalisation in 1953. Air India! The name conjured images of exotic destinations and distant mystic lands. It had romance. If you were an air hostess, you were a young goddess in the skies as unattainable as an apsara. If you were an Air India pilot, you were the most sought-after knight in the skies.

That was then, when J.R.D. Tata ran the airline. She has now returned to the Tatas—decrepit and severely dented in her reputation for customer service, with shabby aircraft, frequent delays and cancellations, and horrendous passenger experience.

Paris, the prince of Troy, stole Helen, the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. Menelaus led a war against Troy, killing Paris. While one can imagine what passions drive men to wage wars to repossess the women they love, one wonders what possessed Ratan Tata to win back Air India, now an impoverished relict.

Yet there was great cheer in the country when the Tatas took over Air India. There was hope in the air that the national carrier will blaze a trail once again under the famed Tata leadership and recapture its glory days.

But we jumped the gun. Stuff happened. A drunken passenger urinated on a lady in the business class of the airline on a flight from New York to Delhi and exposed himself to her and to the fellow passengers. Close on the heels of that horrendous incident, news emerged that there was one more case of a male passenger peeing on a lady on another Air India flight. It never rains but pours. It sent shock waves and has damaged the reputation of the airline which the Tatas were trying to rebuild from the ashes.