The gentleman next to me on a rickety bus from the terminal to an aircraft smiled warmly and said, “Sir, we are delighted you fly Air India. Most media personalities only criticise us, they don’t fly us!” He introduced himself as a senior manager in Air India.
I fly all airlines, I explained to him, depending on convenience of timing. My interlocutor persisted, “Sir, Air India flights are more punctual than others, we try our best to take off on time and land on time.” That, I suggested, must be with some help from air traffic control!
“True sir, but that is the only advantage we have. We cannot compete with private airlines on the ground or in the air, so we try to compete while taking off and landing!” We both laughed.
I was touched by his honesty and loyalty to his employer. I admire your commitment to Air India, I said to him, I don’t encounter such loyalty very often in the public sector. “Sir, employee loyalty has been destroyed by bad leadership. Is there loyalty to Air India among those who run this airline, sir? The bureaucrats and the politicians? Sir, the ministry should be renamed ‘uncivil aviation’!”
It was like I had lifted the floodgates. A torrent of comment burst forth that could only be stopped as we boarded our flight.
I reflected on the gentleman’s comments, watching yet another strike disrupt the airline. TV discussions were going on and on about the need for privatisation, getting government out of aviation and how the employees are all pampered. No one I heard mentioned the fact that the world’s best airline, Singapore Airlines, is government-owned. Indeed, Air India too, at one point, was regarded as among the best in the world.
Many eminent writers have written learned books about how ownership should not impact as much on company performance as management. It is not who owns but who manages, and how, that matters.
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For some time now, under successive political and administrative leaderships, the management of India’s so-called “national carriers” has grievously suffered. What became obvious from my conversation with this loyal middle manager was that the airline’s top management — including those who have run the ministry — has lost the trust and loyalty of its middle managers.
When the bond breaks between those who lead and those who are led, no quick-fix repair will work. Neither carrots nor sticks can motivate sullen managers and workers. It is not new aircraft or new airports, but a new leadership with a new strategy that Air India needs.
Air India is over-staffed, with over-aged aircraft and air hostesses. In a highly competitive services sector business like civil aviation, the morale, the efficiency and the commitment of people matter every minute of the working day. Air India’s biggest problem is that morale is low in the most critical segment of company management — the middle management.
Squashed between bureaucrats and politicians above and unruly white-collar and blue-collar staff below, Air India’s middle managers have no stake in providing that vital organisational link between the top and the bottom that is so critical to organisational elan.
What is also clear is that the merger of the erstwhile Air India and Indian Airlines has not produced a happy marriage. Corporate mergers are like arranged marriages. Love has to be created between partners for the merger to succeed. Managing a merger is an art as much as a science and companies pay good money to get expertise for the job.
At the time of the merger, the civil aviation ministry claimed the initiative had six objectives:
“1. Create the largest airline in India and comparable to other leading airlines in Asia.
2. Provide an integrated international/domestic footprint which will significantly enhance customer proposition and allow easy entry into one of the three global airline alliances.
3. Enable optimal utilisation of existing resources through improvement in load factors and yields on commonly serviced routes as well as deploy ‘freed up’ aircraft capacity on alternative routes.
4. Provide an opportunity to fully leverage strong assets, capabilities and infrastructure.
5. Provide an opportunity to leverage skilled and experienced manpower available to the optimum potential.
6. Provide a larger and a growth-oriented company for the people and the same shall be in larger public interest.”
That these objectives have not yet been met is clear from two parliamentary reports. Even if critical remarks of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture are to be discounted because its chairman is communist party leader Sitaram Yechury, who has trade union interests in public sector airlines, one cannot ignore the views of the Committee on Public Undertakings (CoPU), chaired by a sober and moderate parliamentarian like Kishore Chandra Deo (Congress party).
Regretting that Air India was “slipping into an abyss”, Mr Deo and CoPU have argued in a recent report: “The so-called merger was an ill-conceived and erroneous decision neither arrived at by the two airlines on their own accord nor mutually considered by them to be in their best interests.”
Worse than the merger is the middle managers’ view of the merger. Most believe it was done to harm the airline rather than help it. Facts may not bear this out, and rumours should never be believed till they are proved true. But rumours impact on morale. No one can condone the white-collar unionism of pilots or the sullen apathy of glum air hostesses; no one can excuse the inefficiency of an over-staffed service. Yet, if the organisation has been paralysed by poor leadership, it is time to ask whether indiscipline at the bottom is a consequence of incompetence above.