Nacil not to restructure deal with Airbus, will stick to original plan

Bangalore/Mumbai: State-owned carrier National Aviation Co. of India Ltd, or Nacil, which operates flag carrier Air India, has dumped its plan to restructure a deal to buy Airbus A320 planes from European plane maker Airbus SAS, and will stick to its original plan of inducting 15 planes by the end of 2010.
“Air India had asked us for a plan for restructuring. We presented (the proposal). But they decided on the initial plan,” Kiran Rao, executive vice-president for sales and marketing at Airbus, said in an interview on Wednesday.
An Air India spokesperson confirmed that his carrier was not cancelling or delaying the delivery of any Airbus planes.
State-run Air India is expecting a bailout from the government to the tune of Rs15,000 crore and has committed to overhaul its operations and restructure debt of Rs15,241 crore. Its accumulated loss through fiscal year 2009 was at least Rs7,200 crore.
As part of the effort to turn around the company and cut costs, Air India had held talks with aircraft manufacturers to lower their prices.
“The idea was to defer the deliveries of the planes. One of the suggestions was to cancel some of its orders. The talks are progressing to have optimized fleet, which will also reduce the financial burden. But nothing has been finalized yet,” said a person familiar with the airline’s turnaround plan.
In 2005, Air India had placed an order for 111 aircraft, 43 from Airbus and 68 from rival Boeing Co. As part of the turnaround plan, Air India had proposed to launch a low-fare carrier with an all-economy-class configuration.
23/09/09 K. Raghu and P.R. Sanjai/Livemint

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2009, NACIL Sep 2009