Indian airlines are losing less money these days or maybe some are even making money of late. After years and years of CAPA figures and Kapil Kaul telling me how grim the situation is, things have turned. Finally, oil prices are under check, some sense seems to have come into many of the low fare players and red marks on balance sheets have actually turned black — and it’s not just lease and sale back tricks and other financial jugglery.
But no matter how hard I try, I for one can’t seem to feel very happy about this. Why? Because the Indian air space is so dull ever since the exit or disappearance of the larger than life personalities and events — NG (Naresh Goyal), VJM (Vijay Mallya), the Sahara Shri (Subroto Roy), Powerful Patel (Praful Patel), Sharad Pawar (never directly involved but always lurking in the shadows), Captain Gopi of Deccan (many in the industry had renamed it Air Dhakkan) — that I watched while covering the industry from 1996 onwards.
Right from the shooting of the East West managing director in 1995 near his office in Mumbai right up to the suicide of a senior Kingfisher airline official and arrest of Gopal Kanda (India’s first vegetarian airline), there was never a dull moment. Women, sex, suicide, intrigue, murder, betrayal, back-stabbing — all the ingredients for a highly successful potboiler were always on offer.
Now when someone mentions aviation to me, I struggle to conceal a yawn. And I know for a fact that I’m not alone — the aviation sector is with me on this. People truly miss Goyal’s paranoid style of running his company and Mallya’s ridiculous need to enter any room surrounded by his army of hangers-on. I remember Ray Webster of EasyJet asking me if he – Mallya – was a “maharaja” at an international conference once and I replied that in his own eyes, he was.
How many of you remember the bitter battle between Sahara Shri Subroto Roy and Jet Airways’ Naresh Goyal when the latter — after months of being told by his aides that it was a stupid move — decided he wanted to back out of buying Sahara after all? Within weeks, two camps were formed — one group that backed Sahara Shri (who was in the right on this one) and the other that knew that Goyal was wrong but would be damned before they admitted it openly.
Then, how many remember the sudden love affair between Mallya and Goyal when they were found arm in arm on a golf cart at the Hyderabad air show? Close aides were finding it hard to pry them apart even for a couple of minutes. And I’m sure few have forgotten Goyal’s melodramatic performance on TV when he fired and reinstated 1,900-odd employees of his airline. He shed tears — claiming he didn’t know of the proposed sacking on national television, even mentioning his mother in the process.
I still recall the day Mallya announced his plans to go international (post his buy-out of Deccan) and the celebration in the Jet Airways Mumbai office on how this was the “beginning of the end” for their rival. I also remember Jeh Wadia in Mumbai telling me he was going to “change the way India flew” forever.
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Then there was the plotting and planning by aviation ministry as it handed out the country’s major airports to private parties but somehow couldn’t manage to hand Mumbai over to Anil Ambani's Reliance Group despite the ministry’s best efforts. There was the bitter battle and rivalry between Boeing and Airbus over the aircraft purchase when one of the managing directors of Indian Airlines complained of foul play and approached the then Cabinet secretary but to no avail. He didn’t realise everyone was in it together.
And the weddings! I remember one in particular in one of the cities of Rajasthan, orchestrated primarily from the Kingfisher office in South Extension. I went through those files in fascination and disbelief while airlines fell over themselves offering their aircraft to fly guests back and forth. The Ambani brothers were to attend and there was a discussion on who should get the presidential suite and who should get the second best. No prizes for guessing who got what. Even then the Ambani brothers positions were pretty clear.
From here we have come to Ashok Gajpatiraju, Rahul Bhatia, Phee TeikYeoh, Ajay Singh, Wolfgang Prock Schaeur, the Wadia heirs. This is by far the dullest phase for Indian aviation in my living memory.