One month after the crash in Ahmedabad, Air India in turmoil
The weekly magazine “India Today” has dedicated a report to the national airline Air India, whose plane crashed on June 12, revealing the many projects that need to be undertaken “to regain confidence and credibility.” The disaster left 260 people dead.
“How to fix Air India?” asks India Today on the front page of its July 21 edition. The weekly devotes a report to “what the Tata-owned airline must do to regain trust and credibility after the Ahmedabad crash.” It was June 12, when a London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Airport in western India. With 260 deaths, it was “one of the most catastrophic accidents in Indian aviation history.”
But, the India Today editorial points out , “there is an uncanny resemblance between the ill-fated Dreamliner's brief trajectory in Ahmedabad and the larger corporate narrative surrounding it: an ambitious curve, a sudden, unexplained loss of power, and then images of devastation.”
The national airline was privatized in January 2022 to the Tata Group, a giant consortium comprising no fewer than 93 companies in nearly every economic sector, from steel to telephony. Even today, “some continue to question the wisdom of acquiring a heavily loss-making airline,” the article notes. But cleaning up the company's finances is no simple matter: “Continuous cost cutting is inevitable, but safety and service standards are likely to suffer.”
Especially since Air India's fleet is particularly aging. Approximately 35% of its 199 aircraft are more than 10 years old; 43% are more than 15 years old. And while the company has placed firm orders for 470 new aircraft, their full deployment will extend until 2030, continues India Today . Meanwhile, Air India's arch-rival, IndiGo, has a brand-new fleet.
And who will pilot them? “The airline’s pool of Indian pilots is very limited, as evidenced by its reliance on foreign pilots.” In November 2024, Air India merged with Vistara, another airline partly owned by the Tata group, severely exacerbating the turmoil, as staff were unhappy about the pay cuts.
Moreover, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed on Thursday, July 17, that the cause of the Ahmedabad tragedy could be human. In an audio recording, the co-pilot is heard asking the captain why the latter turned off the switches controlling the fuel flow to both engines, which allegedly caused the crash. The Indian Air Accidents Investigation Bureau, relayed by India Today , scathingly denied: “These reports are unverified and selective.” The final report could take a year to publish.
Courrier International
