India's flag carrier Air India has been criticised for its diminishing image and mounting losses. Its softspoken managing director, Brijesh Kumar, a career bureaucrat, talks to Navneet Sharma ABOUT HOW HE PLANS TO SPRUCE UP Air India's image, its financial problems and make it a market driven company despite the burden of Government yoke.

Air-India has a terrible reputation among international airlines. What have you done to change the situation?

We have had an image problem due to poor ontime, disruptions and delays since the late 80s. Though there has been an improvement, image correction takes sometime. In the last two-three years, we have tried to check indiscipline, reverse the trend of marginalisation of Air India and improve on-time performance and industrial relations. The results have been quite encouraging.

While capacity deployment has increased by nearly 35 per cent, passenger carriage has gone up by 46 per cent. Our on-time has improved to over 80 per cent on 30-minute delay basis from the miserable 40-50 per cent in early 90s. Today, it is comparable to the best in the world. And not a single man-day has been lost due to an industrial dispute in the last 8-10 months. We still have a long way to go. Now, we are focusing on profitability and fleet expansion.

Having suffered unprecedented losses in the last two years, the airline has projected a net profit of Rs 91.26 crore in 1997-98. How will you manage this?

We have an elaborate plan. The projections are based on improvement in yield, increase in overall load factor and rationalisation of routes. The yield is expected to go up by 7 per cent in the first half (April-September 1997) and 9 per cent in the second half (between October 1997 and March 1998). We are expecting a 2 per cent increase in overall load factors and 23 per cent increase in average utilisation of 747-400 and A310 aircraft. These are relatively more cost-efficient aircraft. We are focusing of our cargo business by trying to make it a separate profit centre.

Then, we are rationalising our route structure to cutdown operation costs. For instance, flights which used to go Mumbai-Delhi-Singapore are being reviewed. We are removing these kind of unnecessary legs from the schedule. Instead, we are trying to turnaround flights from Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Madras. We are also planning to check wasteful expenditure in a big way. We have already closed down a few offices abroad. These efforts have already shown encouraging results in the last quarter of 1996-97 with a profit of Rs 6.76 crore. In fact, we reduced our losses to Rs 63 crore in the second half (from October 1996 to March 1997) from Rs 218 crore in the first half (April-June 1996).

Air India's seems to have slipped up on the marketing front too.

There have been problems on this front but we plan to change all that as the core product has been set right with considerable improvements in on-time performance, employee disciplinee, employee attitude to passengers and aircraft availability. We have worked out a year-long product enhancement programme and a marketing initiative programme, with special fare packages for Singapore, Gulf, Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam sectors in April-June quarter followed by Tokyo, Nairobi, Dar-e-Salaam and Seoul sectors in July-Sept quarter, Kathmandu, Geneva, South Africa, Chicago sectors in October-December quarter and Hong Kong, Manila, Mauritius and London sectors in Jan-March quarter. We will have a lot more to offer in form of mobile phones for First Class visitors, hand-held videos in Combi and A300 and shower facilities and pedicurists at the Maharajah Lounges.

What has happened to your fleet expansion plan with the induction of medium-capacity long-range (MCLR) aircraft?

We are eagerly awaiting a decision on MCLR, which is going to be crucial for the airline. The matter is with the board of directors. I really don't know how long it will take. But we have inducted six 747-400s in the last three years. Besides, our proposal for three A310s is pending with the government.

How will you tackle the problem of excess manpower?

We are faced with the problem of a staff of over 18,000 for its 28 aircrafts but we have expansion plans which will help us reposition our staffers. We are also working on a voluntary retirement scheme, which will be introduced in 4-5 months.

Last week, the airline was criticised for flight cancellations and slipshod handling of Haj operations? What do you feel?

We were given a task and we are just doing that. The government was informed about the impact of diversion of aircraft for Haj operations on the flight schedule of the airline. I just don't want to say anything more about this.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.