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NEW DELHI: The Air India plane crash in which more than 200 passengers were killed on Thursday (Jun 12) has plunged the airline into its deepest crisis yet and will deal a heavy blow to its efforts to revamp its reputation and fleet.
After taking the carrier over from the government in 2022, the Tata Group unveiled ambitious plans to reverse years of underinvestment in an ageing and outdated fleet and create a "world class airline", as CEO Campbell Wilson has repeatedly put it, on a par with rivals like Emirates.
The turnaround has been aimed at tackling its myriad problems including persistent flight delays, disgruntled customers, a shortage of spare parts, delayed plane deliveries and years of financial losses.
"Newer aircraft and better maintenance should be the hallmark for Air India to survive. Proper maintenance is what they should be looking into, because Air India has had a chequered past," said Vibhuti Deora, a former legal expert at India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.
That past includes, while under government ownership, Boeing 737 flight from Dubai overshooting the runway at one domestic airport and crashing into a gorge in 2010, killing 158 people. More recently, its low-cost unit Air India Express saw one craft skid off a runway in India in 2020, killing 21 people.
Only a few days ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told an international gathering of hundreds of airline executives in New Delhi that the country's aviation industry stood at a crucial point of takeoff.
On Thursday, however, Air India swapped the bright red colour scheme and logo on its website for a more sombre black and grey one, covering it with a banner that carried the crashed flight's number: "AI-171".
"For an airline, the most important thing is the brand's identity with safety. This will be a major setback for the brand in that aspect," said Dilip Cherian, a communications consultant and co-founder of public relations firm Perfect Relations.
"DIFFICULT DAY"
With its maharajah mascot, Air India was once renowned for its lavishly decorated planes and stellar service championed by its founder, JRD Tata, India's first commercial pilot.
But since the mid-2000s, the carrier's reputation has worsened as financial troubles mounted. It has flown widebody planes with business class seats in poor condition and grounded some of its new Boeing 787 Dreamliners for lack of spare parts.
When Tata regained control, the airline was "just in absolute shambles", its CEO Wilson told Reuters in a 2024 interview, noting that some of its planes hadn't had a product refresh since they were delivered in 2010-2011.
Air India, which has a 30 per cent share of the domestic passenger market, has a fleet of 198 planes, of which 27 are 10 to 15 years old and 43 are more than 15 years old, the civil aviation ministry told parliament in March. Air India Express had 101 planes, with 37 per cent of them more than 15 years old.
The plane that crashed on Thursday was 11 years old, according to Flightradar24.
Rival Indian airlines like IndiGo operate newer planes.
Air India, which is part-owned by Singapore Airlines, has placed orders for 570 new jets in recent years and is in talks for dozens more.
It has even aggressively expanded its international flight network in the face of the fury of its passengers, who often take to social media to show soiled seats, broken arm rests, non-operational entertainment systems and dirty cabin areas.
It has also been ranked the worst airline for flight delays in Britain, where its departures were on average just under 46 minutes behind schedule in 2024, according to analysis of Civil Aviation Authority data by the PA news agency published in May.
It has also been reporting losses since at least fiscal 2019-20. In 2023-2024, it reported a net loss of US$520 million on sales of US$4.6 billion.
Before it can make any further progress on these problems, however, it faces the difficult task of investigating one of India's worst aviation disasters ever.
"This is a difficult day for all of us at Air India," CEO Wilson said in a video message.
"Investigations will take time."
