Describing Air India as a “first-class asset”, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told the Lok Sabha that following the shut-down of Jet Airways, Air India has become “an even more attractive acquisition”.
“Air India is a first-class asset. It has 125 planes; it owns half of them. It flies to 40 international destinations and 80 domestic destinations and it is doing extremely well. The problem is that it has unsustainable debt burden. It is the servicing of that debt burden which is the problem insofar as Air India is concerned,” said Puri adding provisional figures show that Air India’s operating loss in 2018-19 is over Rs 7000 crore.
