Air India to revise restructuring plans
17 Aug 2011
Mumbai: Perpetually on the edge of defaults, to staff, vendors and creditors, state-owned Air India has apparently decided to draw up a more reasonable restructuring plan, with less ambitious fleet expansion targets. It will present its revised targets to a ministerial panel today in Delhi.
The carrier has just experienced a major reshuffle with a relatively junior officer, Rohit Nandan, assuming charge from sacked CMD Arvind Jadhav.
The revised plan, according to airline sources, now aims to rationalise fleet size of the carrier to 245 aircraft by 2018-19, as against the earlier target of 248 by 2015-16.
Air India currently operates a fleet of 124 wide-body and narrow-body aircraft.
The revised fleet size will allow the airline to get away with lower levels of equity support from the government.
Sources suggest that SBI Caps will rework the targets and present a revised plan in two to three weeks.
The revised plan is also likely to relook growth targets set for the airline, which were higher than actual market growth. As a result Air India is likely to focus more on international routes.
Air India deploys 60 per cent of its capacity on the international routes.
