Air India’s group bookings come under a cloud over shutdown fears
Air India’s advance group bookings may have been impacted due to Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri’s statement in Parliament last month that “the airline will have to close down if it’s not privatised.”
The Centre has announced that it was looking to divest Air India and its subsidiaries. The national carrier has been facing an acute cash crunch for the past few fiscals. For April-November, Air India’s losses zoomed to ₹4,685 crore, as against a loss of ₹1,658 crore recorded in FY2019.
Air India has a debt book of around ₹60,000 crore, including total current liabilities of ₹15,000 crore owed to vendors, lessors, employees and airport operators.
A senior official said that Puri’s statement “was impactful on our revenues”. The group bookings account for 4-5 per cent of revenues of Air India, “but, we are correcting it,” he added.
