How many of us knew that the first civil aviation pilot license of India was held by “The Legendary JRD Tata (Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata).” He got the license from Britain’s Royal Aeroclub of India and Burma. Well, what did he use it for?
At the age of 28 he launched India’s first private commercial mail cargo airline called Tata Air Mail in 1932.
The flight’s crew included JRD Tata and Nevill Vincent as pilots, 3 engineers and 4 coolies and 2 guards (this information may seem useless but continue reading). In just one year they had delivered 10 tons of mails and 155 passengers earning of Rs. 60,000 as profits(back then in 1932 it was a lot! Approximately more than 50 lakh rupees) and man this is called hard work.
In 1938 JRD Tata launched Tata Airlines, a fully fledged civil airline for movement of passengers. It bought the most beautiful machine in the industry at that time- ‘Lockheed Constellation’(a large airplane model) and named it as “Malabar Princess”. Malabar Princess was the airline that also took the first international flight from Bombay(Mumbai) to London in a surprising Rs. 1720/-
Everything was going fine until India was set to go into Socialist hands after Independence under the governance of our then Prime Minister Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru. Seeing the profits being made by the aviation sector the government decided to nationalize the aviation sector.
Air Corporation Act, 1953 was brought into action nationalizing 8 airlines and of course no more fully independent private player existed in the market. However, everything was still fine as JRD Tata was the Chairman under the Air Corporation Act, 1953.
JRD Tata was so brilliant at his business that he increased the company’s assets worth from USD 100 Million to USD 5 Billion in a very short time. The Airline was doing so good that Singapore Airlines considered Air India as its role model for business.
Then came 1978 and Morarji Desai came into power and removed JRD Tata as the Chairman of Airlines because of a small difference that Morarji Desai was not in favour of Air India serving Alcohol to its passengers. JRD Tata kept special care of Air India from the change of curtains in the flights to serving the best quality of coffee to the passengers. We can see this in the books written by him “ JRD Tata’s Letters” and “JRD Tata’s Keynotes.” And finally, the Maharaja started tripping.
In 1980 Indira Gandhi came into power in a short span of time and invited JRD Tata back into the company’s board of directors thinking that he would get things back to normal.
It was too late and the government revised the Air Corporation Act in 1994 and made a big change that private players were now allowed in the aviation sector. Many big players joined the league such as Jet Airways, Air Sahara and even low-cost carriers were slowly making an entry such as Spice-jet and Indigo Airlines.
Air India despite being a Premium Airline started losing its ground. It had losses of around 541 crores and had to be merged with Indian Airlines in 2007. A very late decision of Privatizing the Airline was taken by late Finance Minister of NDA-1 Arun Jaitley of selling 76% of stake in Air India.
No one was ready to buy it. Why?
The Airline has lots of debt and money till now was pumped in by the government every year but the government has stopped funding it. The approximate debt is a massive Rs. 58,000 crores and of course no buyer wants the burden of debt.
The government’s holding of 24% will still trouble the private businessman who decides to buy it due to too much interference. Although Arun Jaitley said “If someone can handle the 76% then they can also handle 100%” indicating at a complete sale of Air India.
Also, the company’s employee policy acts as a barrier for any private player in buying stake in Air India. Worldwide there should be 100 employees per plane but Air India has more than 256 employees per plane. And their unpaid salaries is the cherry on top of the cake.
Many of the airline’s flights cannot be used and are grounded due to unavailability of spare parts and of course no one would want to buy grounded aeroplanes.
So will Air India join the list of Grounded Airline companies such as Air Deccan, Kingfisher and Jet Airways?
Loss of this Maharaja will be a loss for the entire country.
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