Air India to withdraw profitable flights

CHENNAI: All airlines gear up for roaring business for the holiday season between October and January each year. But not Air India.

The Maharaja slept like a log last winter after withdrawing some of its profitmaking flights citing ‘poor load and viability’.

Ditto this year, starting November, but for a different reason: ‘shortage of cabin crew’. Blame it on the management for not planning in advance or the political manipulations that Air India is regularly subjected to.

Five out of the six flights that have been withdrawn from the southern region have shown an average seat occupancy rate of over 85 per cent throughout the year.

Take for instance the Chennai-Colombo IC573/574. One of the oldest and most strategic linkages between the island nation and India, this flight has been operational for over 30 years.

The flight, airline insiders say, has always been full or shown not less than 80 per cent seat occupancy. However, it is to be discontinued from mid- November. “This is bad. Though the company cites cabin crew shortage as the reason, there are political undertones to it. SpiceJet started flights to Colombo recently and AI management has always axed its best flights to give room to private ones,” a senior AI source in its corporate office said.

The other flights that are to be discontinued are the Hyderabad-Sharjah sector, Trivandrum-Bangalore-Chennai sector, Bangalore-Singapore sector and Chennai- Kuala Lumpur sector.

“Chennai-Coimbatore was also withdrawn but that flight’s occupancy rate was small. That was because it was a quick turnaround flight whereas people in tier-2 cities prefer a morning and evening return flight,” an AI pilot said.

“No doubt, there is a shortage of crew. With aircraft acquisitions, crew planning should have happened but didn’t. While cockpit crew was recruited, cabin crew wasn’t. In fact, for recruitments that took place almost a year ago 500 cabin crew were on the short list and many were selected but their actual induction in the company was frozen for reasons best known to the top management.

Letters issued to finalised candidates was withdrawn. This was willful neglect by the management,” an airline insider said.

Last year, after nine profitable flights were withdrawn citing ‘poor load and viability’, Express crosschecked their fact sheets and found that they had a seat occupancy rate of over 80 per cent.

Is that what you call poor load?