An 82-year-old woman, a widow of a lieutenant general, suffered a brain stroke as she fell straight on her face in front of the Air India Premium Economy counter at the Delhi Airport after Air India allegedly failed to provide a wheelchair to her on March 4. Although Air India has accepted that it could not provide a wheelchair to the elderly lady due to high demand, it tried to blame the passenger for arriving at the departure terminal “much later than the recommended two hours before departure.”
The elderly lady’s granddaughter Parul Kanwar took the issue to micro-blogging platform X, where she wrote that the old lady has been admitted in an ICU for potential brain bleeds. She had alleged her grandmother was not provided with a wheelchair, which was booked in advance, and had to walk across the parking lanes and enter the terminal. She added that a wheelchair was provided only after her grandmother’s legs finally gave up and she fell, leaving her with a bleeding lip and injuries to her head and nose.
On Saturday, Air India released a statement wherein it blamed the elderly woman’s family of reporting at the Person with Reduced Mobility desk less than 90 minutes before the scheduled time of departure. The airline also accepted that they could not provide her with a wheelchair due to peak demand.
While a complaint has been made to the Director General of Civil Aviation by the woman’s family, the airline is being accused of being one of the worst airlines in the country. Senior advisor to the Ministry of Broadcasting Kanchan Gupta wrote on X that, “Air India has no ability to run Air India. Everyday horror stories are the new norm at the airline.” D Prasanth Nair, advisor to NASSCOM, said, “Sad to see a Tata Goup company doing this. Air India needs surgery, we are only seeing bandaids by the group.”
Just two days after this incident on March 6, an Air India flight that departed from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to reach Delhi International Airport, turned back mid-air after being airborne for over 10 hours. Although the airline cited that the flight had returned due to a technical issue, it was reported that the actual reason was clogged lavatories. PTI had reported that only one out of ten lavatories was functional in the flight.
This instance was a new low, not just for Air India but for the Indian aviation sector as well. After Jet Airways ceased its operations in 2019, the re-privatisation of Air India in 2022 sparked a new hope for the rise of aviation in India. However, after more than three years of the Rs18,000 crore deal in which Air India was sold to the Tata Group, the airline has not changed much, except merging Vistara to the airline.
Although the airline has added a few technological upgrades including in-flight Wi-Fi services and AI-powered booking system, which are the firsts in the segment, the issue with the aircrafts’ basic facilities continue to haunt the flyers. Every day flyers outpour their disappointment against Air India on social media with the complaints ranging from delayed flights, misplaced luggage, broken seats and many more.
Just two weeks back on February 22, union minister Shivrajsinh Chaouhan had alleged that he was given a broken seat in an Air India flight from Bhopal to Delhi. “My impression was that Air India’s service would have improved after Tata took over the management, but it turned out to be my misconception. I don’t care about discomfort in sitting but it is unethical to make passengers sit on bad seats after charging them full amount. Isn’t this cheating the passengers?” Chouhan said.
As this time, the victim of Air India’s apathy was a union minister, the Ministry of Civil Aviation came in action along with the civil aviation minister Rammohan Naidu, who spoke to Air India and immediately instructed them to take necessary actions. Naidu had also claimed that the Director General of Civil Aviation will “be looking into the details of matter promptly.”
Looking at the airline’s performance, it has not met its own figures from before the Covid-19 pandemic. During the financial year 2019-20, Air India had recorded 1.64 lakh departures, which carried 2.24 crore passengers, on the domestic and international sector. The lastest yearly air traffic statistics show that in 2023-24, Air India recorded 1.51 departures and carried 2.35 crore passengers. The airline’s fleet size as of March 31, 2023, was 118 aircrafts against its fleet size of 128 in 2019.
“Air India has covered a lot of ground in the period since privatisation, we acknowledge there’s much more to be done. All 30,000 Air Indians are fully committed to improving the quality and consistency of our services, in all areas, so that Air India becomes the world-class airline we all want it to be,” Campbell Wilson, CEO and MD of Air India had said in January.
Although Air India aims to create “a world-class, global carrier with an Indian heart,” aviation experts believe that the airline has not performed as per expectations even after reaching mid-way point of the Vihaan.ai transformation programme that was started as soon as Tata inherited the airline. Aviation experts believe that Air India continues to face multitude of challenges after being privatised but lacks discipline to overcome them.
Talking to The Free Press Journal, Captain Mohan Ranganathan, former airline instructor pilot and member of the Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Council, said that Air India has been feeding inflated numbers about its fleet order and raised doubts about the airline’s order of 470 aircrafts. He hinted that even after bringing in an expat CEO, there seems to be favouritism in the organisation which is preventing the airline from performing better.
“When Air India was under government control, it was a mess but they were getting away with it. I had expected the Tatas to correct a lot of things after the first one and a half year when they were stuck with dead work but they are still lagging behind. The training standards are very low and show the same kind of errors like hard landing and tail strike. Even though Tata’s Code of Ethics is considered very highly, when it comes to Air India, it is pathetic,” Ranganathan said.
On the other hand, Jitender Bhargava, an aviation expert and former executive director of Air India, believes that Tatas would have brought the airline back on track by now but they had a multitude of challenges which is taking time to overcome. He said that putting grounded aircrafts back in the air, expanding the network, building a new management team and its merger with Vistara collectively became a herculean task for the airline.
“Rejuvenation of Air India is a five-day test series and not a T20 match. If they had a team ready in 2022, they would have fared pretty well by now. The aviation industry has suffered the most due to the supply chain problem but if you look at Air India’s refurbished A350s or the Boeing 777s leased from Delta Airlines, these are superior products. When I look at small individual incidents in the aviation industry I get anguished and think that the Tatas have not done a great job. However, when I look at the totality of the situation, I believe that it takes time to overcome so many challenges,” he added.