The government owned Air India continue to be in financial doldrums as only nine of its 370 daily flights being profitable. Coming to the international arena, only three flights are possible and not even one in the US-Europe routes. Interestingly all the Six Metro Cities routes are not being profitable for the government owned airline while other cities like Hyderabad, Vijayawada are making up for the losses in Metros.
The profitable international flights are between Cochin-Kozhikode-Jeddah; Kozhikode-Sharjah and Kolkata-Yangon. The profitable domestic ones are between Delhi-Leh; Delhi-Kolkata; Leh-Jammu; Delhi-Srinagar; Srinagar-Leh and Delhi-Hyderabad-Vijayawada. The company has a loan of Rs 52237 crore as on October 31st, with Rs 23,358 crore being aircraft loan and the remaining Rs 28,879 crore was working capital loan.
The airline also has an acute shortage of cabin crew for both domestic and international routes due to the bad finances and 50 more pilots resigned to the company this year. Experts say the government should intervene at right now and keep the airlines future checking else it should collapse like Indian Airlines, a government owned airlines closed down few years ago.
