air india

India’s aviation sector has become such a pathetic joke that frankly speaking it’s not even funny anymore. It’s just simply pitiful and reaching a knife edge of impatience. Earlier this month the pilots of Jet Airways went on strike leaving thousands stranded. During that time India’s Civil Aviation Minister Mr.Praful Patel took the moral high ground and spoke something to the effect which suggested that private Airlines mismanage their employee grievances worse when compared to the government run Air India.

As of Now the 5 day saga of the striking executive pilots of Air India is over. A liberal approach always seems the right thing when the fire is in someone else’s home but when your own house is burning down, what will you do Mr. Patel?

 Air India has been grounded. Now that its official that the country’s national carrier will be bailed out by the government, the easy part is over. The hard part starts now. Restructuring a gargantuan company which is packed to the brim with too many employees, a lackluster business model, over dependence on the government and huge losses is a very difficult and time consuming task. There are simply way too many people to satisfy and the fact that it’s a Public Sector Company does not make it a single bit easier.

The airline companies simply can’t seem to catch a break and unfortunately neither can airline passengers. Once again the airline sector is all set to hike air fares across domestic routes on all flights. The country’s two biggest airliners, Kingfisher and Jet Airways have already announced that they will indeed be raising prices by as much as Four Hundred rupees a ticket. This time the excuse for the price hike being given is the all too often heard ‘fuel surcharge’.

For the past one year airline passengers have been subject to  one agony after another ,all of which have been ways of raising money for the airline companies either in the name of ‘maintenance fees’, ’infrastructure fee’, ’user development fee’ or simply the fuel surcharge.