Air India- the heat is on
Neelam Mathews June 26, 2011 As Air India looks to starting flights to Sydney or Melbourne and increase its flights from five to dailies to Paris, the carrier’s image worldwide has taken a beating with only 20% of management salaries paid since April. (The rest is paid as performance-linked incentives (PLI). Insiders say policies in the past three years have led to this dire situation with some political interests acting against the carrier’s interests. “Twenty eight lucrative routes were withdrawn in the past year adversely impacting airline's revenues, and given to private carriers. Air India is good at starting routes that are new and then pulling out when they start making money,” an analyst tells Aerospace Diary. Around 80% of the routes withdrawn were on the international sector with a load factor over 80%. Routes that were doing well and withdrawn included Amritsar-London-Toronto, Chennai-Colombo, Kolkata-London. Presently, Jet Airways flights to Toronto are running a...