Air-India puts idle resources to use

Air-India (A-I) is leaving no stone unturned in its attempt to improve its profits. The airline has now drawn up a blueprint to optimally use its idle resources to generate additional revenue.

A-I is looking at selling a major portion of its 500-odd residential flats at Nerul near Mumbai to its employees.

It is planning to set up a full-fledged training centre and a simulator at Nerul at an investment of around Rs 50 crore and will consolidate its existing training operations under one roof at Nerul. It currently has three simulators training pilots in flying Boeing 747s and Airbus A310s.

V Thulasidas, chairman and managing director of A-I, told Business Standard: "Idle assets make no sense. A-I is going to play a much larger role in the promotion of tourism in India than ever before. The 'travel and tourism mart' of A-I will be a new business model. We are taking the expertise of financial consultants to design our business plan."

This comes at a time when the airline's budget arm, Air India Express, is planning on flying in the domestic market.

Further, the national carrier has decided to let out on rent the ground floor of its building at Nariman Point in Mumbai to tourism promotion bodies on the condition that the business they generate at the premise will be routed to the airline.

For instance, any foreign tourism board or travel company in the building will only sell A-I as an airline, no matter what destination it offers.

One of the floors of the A-I building has been evacuated to set up two call centres, one for its domestic operations and the other for international operations.

While the operations of the call centre handling domestic business will be outsourced to a third party, A-I will handle the operations of the international one.

"We will be selling the flats at Nerul to past or present A-I employees and to employees of public sector civil aviation companies or bodies like Indian Airlines or the Airports Authority of India," Thulasidas said.