Government to sell Air India’s domestic, international operations together

The government will not separately sell the international and domestic operations of Air India and interested parties will have to bid for them together. Bids will be sought for AI's domestic and international operations as an "integrated airline", Union minister of state for aviation Jayant Sinha said Friday. Interested parties will be allowed to bid separately for subsidiaries of AI. The national carrier has five subsidiaries — low-cost airline AI Express; ground-handling arm AI Air Transport Service; maintenance, repair and overhaul arm AI Engineering Services; regional operator Alliance Air; and Hotel Corporation of India, which runs Centaur hotels. "We have so far received formal expression of interest (EoI) from IndiGo for AI's airline arm. For the groundhandling and MRO subsidiaries, a few others have done the same," Sinha said. Some players, including Tatas, have informally indicated interest in AI's airline operations. IndiGo's EoI was for the "international airline operations of AI and AI Express. Alternatively, it is equally interested in acquiring all of the airline operations of AI and AI Express". <br/>