Air India Strategy to cut losses on International Flights
Shri Ajit Singh, the Minister of Civil Aviation informed Rajya Sabha today in a written reply that Air India has taken several measures to improve and restructure its schedules. Air India periodically monitors the carriage/load factors/financial performance of services on its network and makes efforts to improve their performance. Whenever any services recurrently give rise to cash losses, Air India analyses the reasons for the losses and based on the strategic importance of such services to its network arrives at a decision whether to continue or withdraw such services. Air India makes changes to its network to rationalize capacity offered on various routes to maximize the benefits to the airline. Consequently, periodic adjustments are done to the schedule to add or reduce capacity from specific routes, introduce new routes and restructure existing routes based on the market dynamics and anticipated financial outcome. At present, Air India has code share arrangementsk with 5 European international carriers. Through these arrangements, Air India has developed a secondary network in Europe in addition to its own existing network operated by own capacity. This secondary network arrangement has increased Air India’s presence in the European market and has enabled Air India to both increase its occupancy and to provide connectivity between interior points in India to the various interior points in Europe, the Minister informed in his reply
