After Air India’s ‘Gharwapsi’, expectations from airlines have increased manifold. From scaling up in-flight services to expanding its flight fleet, Air India is working tirelessly towards achieving 30 per cent share in domestic and international markets over the next five years. Amid broken seats and service issues in some wide-body aircraft, the Air India chief said it expects to get all business class seats and all economy class seats in wide-body aircraft in good working order by the end of this month. . Until the beginning of next year. Air India CEO Campbell Wilson stressed how the airline wants to restore its reputation first.
Stating that Air India’s revival is not a “T20 match” but a “Test match”, Wilson said that first, the airline wants to restore its reputation, and “we have evidence to indicate that that progress is being made.” The loss-making carrier, which was taken over by the Tata group in January, has implemented the revival plan ‘vihaan.ai’.
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Wilson, who is the MD and CEO, told reporters here that Air India aims to have 30 per cent share in the domestic and international markets in the next five years. Currently, the airline has a domestic market share of 10 per cent and an international market share of 12 per cent.
When the airline’s financial turnaround is expected, Wilson said it was going to be the culmination of several things. As part of the revival, Air India has been working on bringing grounded aircraft back to air, procuring spares, and refurbishing carpets and cushions, among other initiatives over the past nine months.
According to Wilson, several wide-body aircraft have already been refreshed and it has also renegotiated several contracts. Among other efforts, the airline has doubled the number of people at call centers to reduce turnaround times.
‘Vihaan.AI’ is a comprehensive transformation plan with a detailed road map for the next five years. Regarding the turnaround plan, Wilson said taxiing would be the first phase where it would identify and address all the issues that are tarnishing or continuing to tarnish the Air India brand.
The next phase will be takeoff where the carrier will accelerate investments in systems, processes, people and equipment, including aircraft. After that, it will be a phase of ascent for the airline, and in five years, the carrier will also be looking to triple the fleet.
Wilson said an additional five Boeing 777 aircraft being leased from next month would be used for services to North America. At present, the Tata group has four airlines – Air India, Air India Express, Vistara and AirAsia India. The domestic market in India is primarily a low-cost market.
Wilson said it makes sense to collectively consider and sell the network as a single network, whether full service or low cost. “We will increase domestic services as we bring in more aircraft.”
Noting that Air India’s network has not always been purely commercially operated, he also said that the airline cannot resume the routes that it operated pre-pandemic as the economic scenario changed Is.
Emphasizing that Air India is becoming the employer of choice, Wilson said the airline will need more employees as it expands its fleet. He also said that historically, Air India has not invested enough in technology.
To a question about the synergy between the Tata group companies helping in the revival of Air India, the CEO said intellectual property, practice and business expertise are a big part of it.
The airline will induct 5 wide-body Boeing and 25 Airbus narrow-body aircraft over the next 15 months. The aircraft being leased are 21 Airbus A320 Neos, 4 Airbus A321 Neos and 5 Boeing B777-200LRs.
Air India has a narrow-body fleet of 70 aircraft. Of them, 54 are in service and the remaining 16 aircraft will progressively return to service by early 2023. The wide-body fleet consists of 43 aircraft, of which 33 are operational. The rest will return to service in early 2023, it said in September.
(with inputs from PTI)