Air India est confrontée à de graves difficultés financières et on peut légitimement s’inquiéter de sa survie.
Times are definitely tough for Indian airlines. If you’ve been following the slow death of Jet Airways, you’ll find some similarities with what’s happening to Air India.
Air India can no longer finance its fleet
The Airline will soon be short of 1.3 billion dollars to meet its financial obligations (loans and aircraft leases) while the airline has already a cumulative debt of 7.8 billion! For the record, Jet Airways’ debt was “only” 1.2 billion when it ceased operations.
A good way for Air India to save itself would be to take over routes abandoned by Jet Airways, but the airline is short of aircraft: 25 of its 125 planes are already grounded because they cannot pay for their maintenance.
This leaves only two ways out: sell its non-strategic assets to finance its aircraft or wait for a miracle investor, knowing that the Indian government has said it does not want to put money into the airline.
In such a context, it is difficult to see any other outcome for Air India than to end up like Jet Airways.
A loss for Star Alliance
In terms of competition, if Air France-KLM has lost a lot with the disappearance of Jet Airways, which was its strategic partner in India, then the Star Alliance would lose a foothold in the region.
In any case, on a very competitive market, IndiGo and Spice Jet are the ones who would benefit from the situation.
Photo : Boeing 747 Air India by Mike Fuchslocher via Shutterstock
