Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who lived in a castle and one day a handsome prince rode by, saw her, fell in love and promptly married her, after which they lived happily ever after. That was in a perfect world.

In the real world it is very different. Like with the Air India Maharaja. Like a frog on a lily pad, waiting to be kissed and saved from the evil spell cast upon him. Begging for it. And the princess taking a walk one day hears the frog’s plea. Kiss me, he says, show me your love and I will turn into a handsome prince, marry you and you and I will live happily ever after. Not on your life, said the princess and that night at the palace they feast on frog’s legs.

Much in the same way as government, bureaucracy and the spineless managements and unions of Air India have been feasting on their company for the past thirty years. There is no meat on the bone now and the bankrupt carrier has all but surrendered any pretence to survival. The vulturous picking of the carcass against the backdrop of a Rs 7,200 crore loss has reached its peak and not even the recent staggered proposal to privatise the airline is going to do anything to save it. The stench of defeat lies so heavily upon it that it would be easier to just start another airline rather than save this one.

That Air India was in free fall and about to go into broken wing mode has been obvious since the eighties. The first crack came in the 1974 strike by the IPG and the wedge it drove between the pilots and other unions. Its rather weak-kneed end marked the rise of management as a jackbooted government controlled tyrant and over the next three decades the rather fond pet project of JRD Tata was mauled and raped by incompetence, avarice and sheer bureaucratic arrogance. Run by proxy from the out-offices of the Ministry of Civil Aviation by a slew of ministers and their minions (and even minister’s daughters) Air India turned from an ambassador in the sky to a punch bag for all and sundry.

By these machinations of the nation’s leaders and the emotional blackmail of her passengers Air India has been frequently diverted from its main aim of providing a service and making a profit.

Thirteen managing directors in two decades, a Delhi-based prejudice that has permitted Air India to be whittled away by its domestic sister airline Indian Airlines, a shrinking of its route map after knocking off Rome, Frankfurt, Seoul, Sydney and the abortive US gateways for lack of aircraft and a string of promises to buy and stall fourth generation fleets based on route planning have all dented the corporate confidence. Not only has Air India allowed (been ordered to?) Indian Airlines to steal its international routes it has been stunned into seventh place by competing airlines on the milk and honey Gulf routes and now shares a sliver of its earlier market share.

The old patriotic call is also muted and with alliances and code sharing blurring the nationalistic lines, the passenger is no longer called upon to see his carrier as an object of unremitting pride. The guilt has gone. That old mantra of being the nation’s ambassador in the skies is so much nonsense and plays no part in a passenger decision. Today’s dictate is based on options, comforts, rewards, convenient connections and costs. And although Air India comes to the international party it is more like a country cousin at a rich man’s wedding…awkward, bumbling and shabby.

The insider joke is that although technically Indian Airlines and Air India supposedly merged they are still two separate entities. It is not funny. The merger was always unworkable and being band-aided by periodical reshuffles at the top as if cleaning the attic would somehow magically put the house in order. AI & IC, paradoxically, still have separate Accounts and Reservations platforms. In most stations in the Middle East & Gulf, the two airlines have separate GSAs (general sales agents), separate establishments and separate booking offices and airport staff.

Did somebody say ‘merger?’

What must be remembered is the two national carriers of India are competing against each other in the SE Asian and Gulf markets after IC was permitted to operate beyond the Indian shores. Personnel of the two carriers still view each other with distrust and suspicion what with the corporate cultures being totally different and the nutrient for the ongoing hostility.

The biggest bone in the gullet is the issue of human resources left in limbo especially with respect to inter–service seniorities of the combined personnel—at the senior levels percolating to the lower levels. They have been decaying for years. And because of the disparate speed of promotions and varying grades, officers in IC have risen much faster than those in AI. Most senior posts are occupied by IC personnel resulting in major heart burn in the Maharaja’s court.

The biggest challenge still remains managing the disparate workforce. There exists a deep-seated distrust and suspicion of each other’s actions and motives. Integration of the personnel has been effected up to a certain level, and that too has created resentment and a feeling of being cheated in Air India.

Salary scales and policies with reference to payment of allowances and PLI also differ. No real effort has been made to resolve these issues; it appears that the management hopes that natural attrition will take care of the problems. The one decision the mandarins make is to make no decision.

Attempts at cutting costs by reducing salaries or allowances have not succeeded as was evidenced in the last call for action given by the IC pilots’ body when it is reported that at the PMO’s intervention the CMD had to retract from his decision to declare a lockout.

The three pillars of modern aviation management are recognised as efficient staffing, financial independence and putting in place a merit system. Air India has the highest staff per aircraft ratio in the world teetering somewhere at over 800 as compared to a global average of 350 plus. Financial independence is a non-starter. The merit system is dead.

Which means the fall has not been sudden. The airline has been chewed upon and spat out by political expediency, a line of ignorant bureaucrat chief executives, a freeze on professional inhouse promotions, lack of route planning, a suspension on the yield factor and an arbitrary invasion of its commercial dictate. Let me elaborate.

Whether it is offering expat Indian children free rides home for excellence in studies or sponsoring Indian cultural activities and festivals Air India is a sort of friendly under-the-gun inductee who gets it severely in the neck if it does not respond in accepted fashion to crises of all kinds including freeloaders with contacts. No country’s citizens criticise its airline with the zeal of Indians on the Maharaja and yet, are wont to exploit it in great measure, often blinding themselves to the non-profit, non-professional commitments forced upon the airline.

While the management fights a sort of Custer like battle to keep political interference at bay from the spreading Indian diaspora and its demands, Air India’s hierarchy has two jobs; doing what it is paid to do and responding to the biddings of passing bureaucrats and politicians and expat VIPs whose desires can be equally exhausting.

So whether it is agreeing to transport the bodies of dead expats for free or explaining why fares to the southern cities cannot be reduced to forking out freebies for India’s secular festival entertainments, fairs and exhibitions, flying MPs on jaunts and inaugurals or ‘factfinding’ sprees, blocking three Jumbo widebodies for a VIP flight and thirty-odd other such ridiculous commands, Air India’s social role competes directly with its professional one. And wins. Check the unpaid bills of our leaders and their delegations.

With the chairman appointed by the government, freedom is just another word in the corridors of Air India.

In brief, political interference is best marked by the fact that the ministry’s out-offices are often surrogate reservation centres for upgrades for so called VIPs, last-minute bookings, misuse of power in bringing about the complete destruction of the managing director’s authority when he is summoned daily like a lower division clerk. In a 24-seat configuration in First Class, for example, as many as 15 people could be upgrades, often bureaucrats of no particular consequence.

Indeed, any corporation giving so much away would have been permanently in the red. So, why blame Air India? Unloved from both within and without, the Maharaja is on life support...and sinking.

As the future passenger becomes more demanding and rather unforgiving of anything that falls short of good service, the pressure will increase exponentially. Politicians are already distancing themselves from the imminent collapse. All too often the political pressures placed on airlines are unrealistic and have contributed to the airline’s derailment from its singular purpose…to be commercially viable.

New airlines are coming into the fray and using their fifth and sixth freedoms to advantage. Air India’s bilateral agreements have sometimes been to disadvantage often defying logic like giving away prime routes to foreign airlines, and the shift from demand to supply will now dramatically necessitate some new measures truly capsuled in just two words: Operational independence.

Besides, who will buy a loss-making behemoth? Unless the future owners of the Nariman Point AI building are those that have already benefited so profoundly from a weakened and floundering AI, stolen her routes, eaten up her map, swallowed her profits and now conspire insidiously to carve the white elephant’s tusks and make a grand killing. Get it for cheap. Just dress it all up like it was a mercy mission rather than grand conspiracy.

Happily ever after…you jest! Till then, let's get through today.

This first appeared in the May 1-15 issue of the Governance Now magazine (Vol.01 Issue 07).