Fleet acquisition helped Air India cut losses: Jadhav

Mumbai: Coming under severe criticism from a parliamentary committee on its fleet acquisition plan, Air India's top man Arvind Jadhav on Saturday defended the decision, saying it helped the airline mitigate losses.
"The question is why is Air India buying aircraft when it is supposedly in a tailspin. The point here is that even if we had not bought the aircraft, we would have been in double tailspin," National Aviation Company of India Limited (NACIL) CMD Arvind Jadhav said at a function in Mumbai today.
In the event of Air India not going in for aircraft acqusition to replace its old fleet, the situation would have been worse than what it is today.
Stressing that the national carrier placed orders for buying 111 aircraft in a bid to match the demand and passengers' expectations, Jadhav said what was required today was "the right product for the right customer".
"We had an older aircraft operating on the Delhi-Tokyo sector. We changed it to a (latest) Boeing-777. So long we had old planes, we were losing Rs 40-45 crore annually.
"Once we put a new plane (on a sector), from the first month itself it started showing profits," the NACIL chief claimed, adding that "the Japanese liked the plane and they started travelling back with Air India."
23/01/10 PTI/Economic Times

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Categories: NACIL Jan 2010