“Air India with Tatas could be a phenomenal airline in terms of good quality service and take the airline to its past glory, and that will have an impact on quality of service offered by other low service carriers (read low-cost carriers), if they compete with AI/Vistara for traffic, primarily business traffic,” said Ajay Prakash, president of Travel Agents Federation of India.
Such an impact will however take at least two years to take effect, he said. Prakash, who was part of AI’s sales team in the 1980s, remembers how industrialist GD Birla always flew Air India wherever possible.
“He flew to Geneva often, and there were no direct AI flights to Geneva from Mumbai. He would fly to Delhi a day earlier and then fly to Geneva on an AI flight from Delhi,” Prakash said.
Not just the Birlas, Vijay Mallya’s father Vittal Mallya also had a rule about traveling by Air India whenever possible. Vijay Mallya met his first wife, who worked as an air hostess in Air India, on a flight to the US. “It’s that kind of glory that Tatas can bring back,” Prakash said.
A Tata-run national carrier can should aspire to win over passengers who usually fly Gulf or other carriers.
“AI, under Tatas, will become a big challenger to these foreign airlines, who have grown by carrying Indian passengers,” said Mark Martin, CEO of Martin Consulting, an aviation consultancy firm. “With an improvement in product and services, passengers will prefer direct flight of AI over other carriers, if the service is good.”
On the domestic front, Martin said IndiGo will continue to be the market leader. Emirates president Tim Clark pointed out that Air India should have evolved into a dominant carrier. “Air India is international, but Air India had everything on a plate for 50 years, but they could not perform. It’s a real pity,” he said “I used to fly AI as a kid in the 60s – on Constellations – and the first jet I ever flew on (Boeing 707) was an Air India Jet out of Heathrow in 1960. During those days, this was an airline that was going somewhere,” Clark had told ET on the sidelines of an IATA AGM in 2019. “What has happened in the meantime with a population of 1.2 billion and a transforming economy, Air India should have been the size of Emirates today with that market base,” he said.
With a new management in place, that could just happen–a rejuvenated Air India may eventually become a formidable competitor to Emirates.
