For AI, customer not king, everyone else is

New Delhi: Besides questionable government decisions, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has found that treating everything else - not the passengers - as the real Maharaja has also contributed to Air India's decline. The cash-strapped airline spent more on its employees, aircraft and financing but cut cost where it matters most: Providing amenities to the flyer, which fell by almost 15% from Rs 566 crore in 2005-06 (for both AI and Indian Airlines) to Rs 483 crore in 2009-10 for the merged entity.
On the other hand, the combined workforce of IA and AI fell 12% from 33,575 in 2005-06 to 29,630 in 2009-10. But the employee cost shot up by 43% from Rs 2,352 crore to Rs 3,357 crore in the same period. Despite this, the CAG report quotes a market survey that AI got conducted to compare itself with Jet, Kingfisher, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and British Airways in early 2009 where its personnel were found "elderly and unpleasant". The customer perception for service on AI planes was found "apathetic, grudging" and the ambience "ordinary, outdated".
Terming the decline in expenditure on passenger amenities like food and accommodation provided in event of flight delays and cancellations, the CAG says: "This is a disturbing trend as passenger service is critical to the image of a commercial full service airline. Instead of excessive cost-control in this area (which is apparently easy to cut but could adversely affect customer satisfaction, (the airline) should focus more on cost-cutting in other areas."
10/09/11 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Air India Sep 2011