Air India is scouting for partners for its strategic business units (SBUs), which include cargo, ground handling, maintenance and repair organisations and training, in a bid to increase profitability, said Air India chairman and managing director Raghu Menon.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the curtain raiser of India Aviation 2008, an international exhibition and conference on civil aviation to be held here from October 15, he said they were hopeful of finding SBU partners during the exhibition.
Air India is also working to enhance the occupancy rate to about 75 per cent from the present 64 per cent. “We know this occupancy rate is not good enough,” he said, adding that there were no plans to tweak the air fare structure in the near future. The airlines, however, would be in the comfort zone if the price of crude oil is around $80 a barrel, he added.
The airline has ordered 111 aircraft worth Rs 44,000 crore. Of these, 38 have been delivered and one more will be inducted into the fleet on October 16, to coincide with the India Aviation inaugural. Though all the aircraft were to be delivered by the beginning of 2012, the recent strike at Boeing will delay the delivery schedule perhaps by a year.
He said no retrenchments were happening in the newly formed company but at the same time, they were not making any new recruitments in the non-flying segment. Currently, it has about 32,000 employees.
“The merger of Air India with Indian Airlines will be 75 per cent complete by next year but aligning the HR is the main challenge,” he said.
Air India has joined Star Alliance, the world's largest airline alliance covering 162 countries and touching 975 airports with 18,100 flights everyday. It will, however, become its full-fledged member from mid 2009.
The airline will soon launch flights to West Coast of the US, South Africa and Australia among others.