This sums up the progress so far but fails to highlight all that is still to be done to effect a real turnaround. Such attempts have been part and parcel of Air India’s history for at least the last two decades, ever since its trajectory began to head south. The October 2021 sale of the national carrier was a clear admission of failure of all past attempts and an acknowledgement by the Indian government that some businesses are best left to private enterprise. Hence the big question is: will Air India or its homegrown transformation plan Vihaan.ai deliver “where no man has ventured before”? Can the new owners pull off a turnaround on a runway that has so far been littered with failures.

This is where some of the euphoria following the one year progress report and the latest big aircraft order dwindles. Air India has drawn up a transformation plan, cutely named Vihaan.AI to turn around the erstwhile national carrier, a detailed plan to revive, resuscitate and re-energise the airline. Tata sources say the plan was fully homegrown - no consultants can claim credit for this one - and has detailed proposals and plans to turn things around across departments and functions. The plan remains privy to a chosen few and the details of it are to be shared on a “need to know” basis. The charts with this article outline what is publicly available for interested readers.

This is certainly good news but here’s why the industry remains wary and why the plan as outlined was greeted with a fair degree of skepticism:

To begin with, Vihaan.ai takes only one of the four airlines under the Tata umbrella into consideration and a very valid question the industry is asking is what happens to the rest? At the outset and based on what has been publicly shared, Vihaan.ai seems “very general and makes some of the right noises” without any mention of the real challenges including a merger with Vistara. Says former Air India COO Gustav Baldauf : “There seems to be a vision and a plan for the Tata airline group with different business models and market considerations but for the time it is not presented to the public. We hear or read about mergers and transformation plans but a complex system like this needs a good organisation setup to avoid overlapping in the business as well as in the organisation”.

Some are less charitable about the transformation plan, dismissing it altogether. Shakti Lumba, former head of operation, IndiGo, found himself underwhelmed by the pillars of transformation set out in Vihaan.ai. “Pillar 1 is what every airline does and should desire, pillar 2 will only take shape once the fleet is refurbished, pillar 3 already has a conflict between what they want and what they are hiring and pillar 4 will depend on how the other pillars bear the load of the proposed mergers. It’s been one year but we are yet to see a comprehensive mission statement and plan,” says Lumba. Another former Jet top management team member also dismisses the mission statement. A few industry sources, however, express the view and hope that the Air India management was keeping the real cards of the transformation plan “close to their chest” and that it went beyond what was publicly available.

This brings one to an important feature that most transformation plans and strategies need to bear in mind. Any plan or proposal that begins at the top and filters down is in danger of falling through the cracks. “A bottom up approach in such turnarounds usually works better than a top down one” argues a former CMD of the airline, who has witnessed and recalls vividly the failure of such a plan attempted by the government of the day in his tenure. He says that during his tenure, he routinely found the management and the rank and file working against each other and that unless the junior most employee in the carrier is convinced of the turnaround plans and why it is critical to his and the company’s survival, he will work against it. This remains a worry for any new turnaround plan that begins at the top and hopes to filter down.

And last but not the least, in the last few months and more since October, Air India has been on an aggressive expansion spree and new route additions without any discernible improvement in service. It has added new destinations, enhanced frequencies and increased weekly international flights by 60 percent while offering a product that remains far below industry standard and expectations. From mid February, it resumed its non-stop flight service between Mumbai and New York. This, many argue, is more of a double edged sword as more and more passengers board the airline and find the services not up to the mark. Many fliers who are willing to pay for business and first class are outraged at what they finally experience on board. “Complaints multiply and many first time fliers are put off the airline since first impressions can often be the last”, says an aviation industry analyst. The question therefore is: does it make sense to first bring semblance to the service on offer before expanding the way it is.

Despite these red flags, the mood of the aviation industry professionals and stakeholders remains upbeat post the grand announcement. Whatever the legacy issues may be, the order is certainly a step in the right direction. Skeptics and naysayers too express hope that Air India will be the biggest and the best airline in the world in the not too distant future even as the onus fell sharply on Mumbai’s Bombay House. All eyes are squarely on it as expectations ride sky high.

Air India mega order

Air India: Expectations soar with mega order, but…