AKASH JOSHI: Two questions. How sound is the company financially? There’s talk that you’ll be raising money from the market for your expansion plans. Do you plan to go the IPO way?

Last year was a bad year for Air India, but last year was bad for all airlines in India without exception. But putting that one year aside, Air India has been profitable most years. Indian Airlines hasn’t been so. But the merged entity should have an overall positive balance. As far as funding is concerned, we’ve always borrowed money for buying aircraft and repaid without a single default so far. Our credit rating in the international market is very high. Air India — and for that matter Indian Airlines — only has to float an inquiry for raising debt, and we get it. We had no issues in procuring funds for buying 68 aircraft for Air India and 43 for Indian Airlines. An IPO, of course, is being contemplated and a consultant has been appointed. If the merger had not happened, we’d have gone in for the IPO by now. But we now think it best to go to the market as a combined entity.

LALITHA SRINIVASAN: What about your advertising plans to build the brand? You see commercials of Singapore Airlines etc and feel like flying them. Compared to that, you aren’t giving importance to advertising.

I agree. But what we’ve done in the last month and a half is more than what we’ve done in the last 10-15 years. We need to sustain the tempo and can’t come in with a burst and then disappear. We went for print ads initially, we’re working on television commercials, radio commercials. We are working on a signature tune and are trying to get someone in India who is really good to do a signature tune for us.

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