Before crash, Air India spent years attempting a turnaround after emerging from government control

San Francisco Chronicle​

3 days ago

The deadly crash of an Air India flight carrying more than 240 people on Thursday arrives after years of efforts to turn around the country's flag carrier — which had been plagued by tragedy and financial losses under prior state ownership.
In 2010, an Air India flight arriving from Dubai overshot the runway in the city of Mangalore and plunged over a cliff, killing 158 people out of the 166 on board. And in 2020, a flight for Air India Express, a subsidiary of Air India, skidded off a runway in Southern India during heavy rain and cracked in two — killing 18 people and injuring more than 120 others.
Both of those incidents involved older Boeing 737-800 aircrafts — and occurred while Air India was still under governmental control. Indian conglomerate Tata Sons took over Air India in 2022, returning the carrier to private ownership after it was run by the state for decades.
The 180 billion rupee (then worth $2.4 billion) deal was in some ways a homecoming for Air India, with roots that date back to the Tata family's founding of what was then-called Tata Airlines in 1932. It was also part of an wider effort to save the airline — which had become a money-losing, debt-saddled operation.
Jitendra Bhargava, former executive director of the airline and author of 'The Descent of Air India,' said government ownership fostered an archaic work culture, outdated processes, and management by bureaucrats unfamiliar with the aviation industry.
'You are getting a recipe for disaster. And we went through it," Bhargava told The Associated Press. As a result, he said, the company hemorrhaged money — which had a 'cascading effect' because it couldn't invest in upgrades.
By the time of the Tata Sons takeover, Air India's market share was around 12% and at risk of shrinking as competitors expanded. Bhargava and other aviation experts stress that shedding government control was necessary for Air India to compete with other private rivals — and the carrier has since worked to reinvent itself by modernizing both its operations and fleet.
Over recent years, Air India redesigned its branding and ordered hundreds of new planes from both Boeing and Airbus. Analysts don't expect Thursday's crash, which involved a 12-year-old Boeing 787 Dreamliner, to change such partnerships.
"Admittedly, Air India and the Tata organization have been very proud about the fact that they've made a major commitment to Boeing," said Anita Mendiratta, an aviation and leadership consultant.
While acknowledging that Boeing has been bruised in recent years, largely due to problems with its 737 Max, Mendiratta noted that there's still been a 'hunger' from airlines around the world to add the company's new planes to their fleets after recent delivery delays. That includes demand for the 787 Dreamliner — which, she said, is 'one of the most important aircraft when it comes to sustainable aviation, emissions reduction, managing the costs of aviation.'
Boeing has been plagued by its own safety issues, including past deadly crashes. This, however, was the first crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. And the cause of Thursday's crash is still unclear.
An international investigation is underway, and Boeing has said it's 'working to gather more information.' Air India said it's also working to get answers around what caused the crash — while promising to support those impacted by the tragedy.
'This is a difficult day for all of us at Air India,' CEO Campbell Wilson said in recorded remarks. 'Our efforts now are focused entirely on the needs of our passengers, crew members, their families and loved ones.'
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, added in a statement that 'no words can adequately express the grief we feel at this moment.' He said that the company would provide 10 million rupees (nearly $116,795) to the families of each person "who has lost their life in this tragedy' — and also cover medical expenses of anyone who was injured.
The Boeing 787 crashed into a medical college after takeoff in India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad. A single passenger survived the crash, according to a senior Indian official and Air India. But the airline said there were no other survivors — putting the latest death toll at 241.
Beyond the fatal accidents in 2010 and 2020, an Air India Boeing 747 flight also crashed into the Arabian Sea in 1978, killing all 213 aboard.
The carrier was under government control from 1953 through 2022.
Other fatal accidents involving India's state-owned airlines include the more than 50 people who died in a crash in the eastern city of Patna in 2000. In 1993, a flight crashed in the western city Aurangabad, killing 55. In 1988, over 130 died when a plane crashed while landing in Ahmedabad and in 1991, a crash near northeastern city Imphal killed 69 people aboard.