Tata begins overhaul of Air India after Narendra Modi hands over state carrier

After eight years of late salary payments and months of coronavirus pandemic pay cuts, Air India pilot Ritesh is daring to hope that he will finally be paid on time once India’s powerful conglomerate Tata Sons takes control of the airline. “It’s been years since we have seen timely payment,” said Ritesh, a second-generation Air India pilot who asked to use a pseudonym. “We are hoping that when the Tatas take over, things will be streamlined.” Ritesh is one of Air India’s 13,500 workers now employed by Tata Sons after New Delhi handed over the airline in January. The deal fulfilled longtime goals of both Tata chair emeritus Ratan Tata and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India had tried and failed to privatise Air India for two decades, while Tata wanted to reclaim the airline his ancestor J R D Tata launched in 1932 before the Nehru government nationalised it in 1953. Now, the hard work to reform an airline bleeding $2.4mn a day begins. Air India is running on a fleet of ageing Airbus and Boeing planes, the company culture is derided as bureaucratic and it has been dragged into legal battles around the world. “Air India seems a bit like a black hole, an endless drain on resources,” said Coomi Kapoor, author of The Tatas, Freddie Mercury & Other Bawas: An Intimate History of the Parsees. The Tatas have conceded that turning round the carrier will be difficult. “Admittedly it will take considerable effort to rebuild Air India,” Ratan Tata wrote on Twitter after the conglomerate’s bid was accepted in October. Story has much more.<br/>