India’s loss-making national carrier Air India has been sold to the Tata group, the country’s largest conglomerate.
The government has sold the airline to the company, which was the highest bidder at nearly $ 4 2.4bn.
The Tata group originally founded the airline in 1932 before it was taken over by the government in 1953.
The government had for years been trying to sell the airline, which has racked up losses worth $ 9.5bn.
But it recently sweetened the deal by making the terms of the debt less onerous for the buyer. It’s still unclear how much debt the Tata group will take on under the new terms.
Minutes after the acquisition, Tata Sons Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata tweeted a photograph of the firm’s former chairman JRD Tata on the tarmac with an Air India plane in the background.
The sale is a boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had been keen to sell the government’s entire interest in the airline.
Air India has many assets, including prized slots at London’s Heathrow airport, a fleet of more than 130 planes and thousands of trained pilots and crew.
Tata Sons already run two airlines in India – Vistara, a full-service carrier in partnership with Singapore Airlines, and AirAsia India, a budget airline in partnership with Malaysia AirAsia Bhd.
The national carrier had been making losses since it merged with the state-owned domestic operator Indian Airlines in 2007 and relied on taxpayer-funded bailouts to stay operational. The government said it was making a loss of nearly 200m rupees (2.6m) every day to run the airline.
Over the years, the airline blamed high aviation fuel prices, high airport usage charges, competition from low-cost carriers, weakening of the rupee, as well as a high-interest burden for its poor financial performance.
Air India “suffered for its inconsistent service standards, low aircraft utilization, dismal on-time performance, antiquated productivity norms, lack of revenue generation skills and unsatisfactory public perception”, according to Jitender Bhargava, a former executive director of the airline.
