Interview | Employees come first, says Air India chief Ashwani Lohani after Ravindra Gaikwad row

Air India CMD Ashwani Lohani earned a lot of praise when he took on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad for assaulting the airline's 65-year-old staffer. He reflected the mood of the masses through his unapologetic stand against the unruly parliamentarian. This eventually forced the government to come up with a unique 'national no-fly list'.

In his first print interview after the Ravindra Gaikwad episode, Lohani — who will soon complete two years in office — speaks to DNA about a host of issues. Lohani explains why a hardened stance against Gaikwad was a must, how Air India will be actively filling vacancies and how he plans to revamp the airlines by focusing on the profit-making routes and dropping of some 20 stations on the loss-making routes. He also says that debt is Air India's biggest challenge and jokes that divine intervention is needed to fix the debt issue. Excerpts:

There are many firsts to your credit — a passenger was banned from flying for unruly behaviour; also, for the first time seats were reserved for women...

There will be more such 'firsts'. We will be the first Indian airline to provide direct flights to Washington DC, Stockholm and perhaps Tel Aviv, Nairobi too. Alot of flights within India to tier-11, tier-111 cities will also be started. We will have a unique 'garland flight' by the end of this year which will have multiple stops such as Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Indore, Raipur and Kolkata. This will be a first-of-its kind flight and would fly for 7-8 hours.

For better connectivity within India, are you referring to government's regional connectivity scheme? Is AI likely to get a big chunk of the Rs 500 crore subsidy the government is giving to airlines under the RCS scheme?

We are working very aggressively on providing regional connectivity both under the scheme and otherwise. As far as RCS is concerned, we will actively participate in the bidding process. Our partner Alliance Air was already awarded routes in the first round of bidding.

You are the biggest international airline out of India with 17 per cent shares but in the domestic market your share has been shrinking?

We are continuously growing in the international sector and in the regional sector but in the main domestic market, I don't think our shares will increase anytime soon because of the extreme heavy competition and heavy induction plans of other airlines.

Is the list of stations that you will be scrapping ready? Are these stations on loss-making routes?

No route is loss-making or profit making. Suppose I am running one flight between two cities but my competitor is running eight flights so, obviously my flight is going to be loss-making. So, I have to get out of this. It will be at least two flights between a pair of cities. From October, we will begin to drop stations.

You are known to be accessible to all and have an excellent rapport with your employees. All Air India unions collectively backed you during the Ravindra-Gaikwad episode. How do you manage this excellent equation with everyone?

This is something that cannot be managed. One has to be believe that everybody is equal and important. I also believe that clients don't come first but employees come first. So, if employees are taken care of, they take care of the clients.

There was an 18-year freeze on the hiring of non-operational staff. Do you think Air India is short staffed on that account.

Yes, Air India is short-staffed but the freeze was only for non-operational staff. We will have to start hiring unless we want to sink.

So, we can expect big time hiring in Air India in the days to come? In which departments?

Hiring will not exactly be big time. It will be restrictive hiring, but in all departments such as marketing, commercial, personal, finance, IT etc.

With reference to the Gaikwad episode, is the airline planning to do anything else?

We did whatever we could do and there was support from the government. We cannot allow our employees to be treated that way.

How has this year been so far?

It has been a good year. The airline has stabilized. Our number of bad reviews has come down significantly. Expansion is on track both internationally and domestically. It has been a satisfactory year except for the debt. We need divine intervention to resolve this (laughs).

Long ago, in 2009, you said  if given a chance, you will be able to fix Air India in a year on the basis of your experience of working on Public Sector Units PSUs).. Your thoughts on this because you will soon complete two years with Air India.

I didn’t know then that when I get this airline, it will have a debt of 50,000 crores (laughs). Had there been no debt, I would have fixed the airline by now. Debt is a humongous challenge.

Do you still maintain that Air India is a sick company?

Till the debt is resolved, Air India will continue to be a sick company. We are looking at a lot of things to resolve this problem.

Next to divine intervention is government's intervention. So, anything from the government on the debt issue?

We are trying to find a way together and we are looking at various ways to resolve the issue (smiles).

What happened to the proposal of extending the age of employees from 58 to 60?

Yes, we want this to happen. For the simple reason that if we are not being allowed to hire at least let us stop the exodus for two years. This will certainly give us relief

There was also a proposal for tie-up with railways that passengers who fail to get confirmed berths be sold flight tickets? 

Railways did not agree to this. So, then we started selling tickets at the rate of AC-II tier (smiles)

Any plans to revive that proposal?

We are ready to revive it and we will do something about it. It was a very good proposal.

You are not in favour of sale and lease model of planes? You are in favour of buying planes but is that feasible  considering Air India's huge debt? 

The ideal thing is to buy because then I get a plane with a life of more than 20 years. If I spare that expenditure for 20 years, per year cost becomes much less for what is required for leasing a plane. Leasing happens for 12 years and then you pay again. But we can’t purchase planes because who will give us loan. If somebody gives us loan, who will guarantee it?

The plan was to bring some 30 new planes this year? what is the status?  

Four have come. This year, we will be able to get 14-15 planes.

There was also a plan to provide free Wi-Fi on domestic flights?  What happened?

The process is on and we are waiting to get a clearance from DGCA

Any new programme to attract more consumers to Air India? 

We have become aggressive commercially. Our occupancy in the domestic sector is more than 80 percent. For other carriers, it is 86-87 percent. So, there is not much of a difference there. Our super saver scheme is doing well and very shortly, we will launch an international super saver too

Marketing and branding helped you alot when you were with India Tourism Development Corporation(ITDC) and MP tourism. You did try to promote  Air India's mascot Maharaja. Are you planning to take this up aggressively?

The expectation has to be in sync with what the reality is. We can't do massive branding if the conditions remain the same because then the same branding will go against us. We are not getting the Maharaja very prominently, we are getting him back slowly and in areas where our reach has improved.