To have one airline limping forward on the brink of bankruptcy may be regarded as a misfortune. To have two looks like carelessness.
That’s the fundamental problem for India’s aviation industry, home to the critically ill Jet Airways India Ltd. and its state-owned rival Air India Ltd., which more or less died in 2012 but has been kept on life support thanks to ongoing infusions of taxpayer cash.
Facing collapse, Jet has been trying to restructure its debt and seeking bailout money from founder Naresh Goyal and leading shareholder Etihad Airways PJSC. Should those attempts fail, Narendra Modi will have to explain the loss of 23,000 jobs ahead of May elections.
Air India, known locally as the Maharajah, has been in similarly dire straits. An attempted privatization last year attracted zero expressions of interest. The government is considering a fresh turnaround plan, the Indian Express reported in September.
The problems are interlinked. Due in large part to excessive fleet acquisitions during the 2000s, the Maharajah has been crushed under the weight of his spending. Net debt was about 454 billion rupees ($6.4 billion) in March 2017, the last time Air India published a balance sheet. Debt has since risen to about 519 billion rupees, according to the Times of India.
If it wants revenue to pay that mounting bill, Air India must somehow maintain its market share, in spite of notoriously bad service and on-time performance, and competition from budget upstarts SpiceJet Ltd. and InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., or IndiGo. The tactic it’s used to thread that needle has made matters worse: discounting.
Have a look at the passenger yields for the big four carriers reported to India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation and you’ll see the problem. While Jet has kept yield — a measure of passenger revenue, per seat, per kilometer — at a decent premium to IndiGo and SpiceJet, Air India has been busy matching or even undercutting the no-frills competitors.
23/01/19 David Fickling/Bloomberg
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That’s the fundamental problem for India’s aviation industry, home to the critically ill Jet Airways India Ltd. and its state-owned rival Air India Ltd., which more or less died in 2012 but has been kept on life support thanks to ongoing infusions of taxpayer cash.
Facing collapse, Jet has been trying to restructure its debt and seeking bailout money from founder Naresh Goyal and leading shareholder Etihad Airways PJSC. Should those attempts fail, Narendra Modi will have to explain the loss of 23,000 jobs ahead of May elections.
Air India, known locally as the Maharajah, has been in similarly dire straits. An attempted privatization last year attracted zero expressions of interest. The government is considering a fresh turnaround plan, the Indian Express reported in September.
The problems are interlinked. Due in large part to excessive fleet acquisitions during the 2000s, the Maharajah has been crushed under the weight of his spending. Net debt was about 454 billion rupees ($6.4 billion) in March 2017, the last time Air India published a balance sheet. Debt has since risen to about 519 billion rupees, according to the Times of India.
If it wants revenue to pay that mounting bill, Air India must somehow maintain its market share, in spite of notoriously bad service and on-time performance, and competition from budget upstarts SpiceJet Ltd. and InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., or IndiGo. The tactic it’s used to thread that needle has made matters worse: discounting.
Have a look at the passenger yields for the big four carriers reported to India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation and you’ll see the problem. While Jet has kept yield — a measure of passenger revenue, per seat, per kilometer — at a decent premium to IndiGo and SpiceJet, Air India has been busy matching or even undercutting the no-frills competitors.
23/01/19 David Fickling/Bloomberg
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