Plan to curtail free tickets for AI staff

Financially-hit Air India has been looking at ways to cut expenditure to remain a key player in the market and regain its lost glory. The government had appointed the (retired) Justice Dharmadhikari Committee that was constituted to draw out a level playing field for officials of Air India and Indian Airlines   after the two airlines were merged in 2005 was also mandated to suggest ways to curb expenditure of the carrier to make it more profitable.

The committee has suggested that the number of free tickets offered to its employees and pilots needs to be severely curtailed as they were eating a lot into the airline’s revenue share.

The committee was also mandated to look into ways by which the merged entity could bring down its expenditure so that the airline could regain better fiscal health and reclaim the lost market share.

“Free tickets are part of the perks, but misusing them is not. That is what was happening, people were availing free tickets for the extended family members which has to stop,” a senior Air India official said requesting anonymity. Even today employees of the airline enjoy free tickets but what the airline is looking to cut down heavily is the number of tickets that go to the sons-in-law, or the daughters-in-law.

“The airline has nearly 30,000 employees. Let us assume that 15,000 of them are eligible for passages (free tickets) even if they are given four tickets a year for domestic travel that works to 60,000 free tickets per year, per family, the revenue loss because of the free passages is simply an astronomical sum which an airline with losses to the tune of `10 crore a day can ill afford,” the official added.

Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh has repeatedly asked the state-run carrier to devise ways to bring down costs and expenditure or the government will be forced to shut the tap of equity infusion. The government has promised to infuse `30,000 crore in the airline in the next ten years subject to the airline showing better results. Singh has asked Air India to come out with innovative and customer-focused strategies to achieve optimum utilisation of all planes and also maximum utilisation of each plane,” the ministry said.