Anjuli Bhargava: Three ideas that Air India should fly past

Reinstating pilots, hiring more and offering tickets at very low fares could undo the airline's improvements

Over the years, almost everyone I know has stopped flying Air India as a rule. The airline had become famous for flights that were notoriously late, crews who looked like "they were doing you a favour" and poor quality of on-board food. Not to mention dirty toilets and an occasional rat to accompany you.

Whenever anyone had to fly out of the country, many better options were always available - better timings, connectivity, on-time performance, food and on-board service, and cleaner aircraft.

But in the last couple of years, I have taken six Air India Dreamliner flights and I have to say there is a distinct and visible improvement in service and on-time performance. It may be very limited but none of my six flights were late. Almost all had new, recently hired crew members who seemed quite happy (I spoke to several during the flights) and service was fine if not exceptional. I prefer day flights and some Air India sectors give you this option, making it an added factor in its favour. Improvements in service have come when fuel prices are at an all-time low. As a former aviation secretary joked to me the other day: "In the present scenario, even Air India can't help but inch towards an operational profit."

But even as Air India seems to be getting its act together on some fronts, there are at least three bad ideas that seem to have emerged out of nowhere lately if newspaper reports are anything to go by. Based on what I have seen and what observers who watch the airline closely have to say, I am listing these so that if anyone is listening, they can perhaps rethink.

In 2012, there was a strike among Air India pilots. The strike stretched for days, caused huge inconvenience to passengers and cost the airline an arm and a leg. Agitating pilots almost held the airline to ransom. Despite long, protracted discussions, the pilots stubbornly refused to come back on duty.

In what was an unprecedented and decisive government action, 13 office-bearers of the Indian Pilots' Guild were eventually dismissed from service and their contracts were terminated. The development was like a watershed in the history of the airline. For the first time, the management took strict disciplinary action and sent a clear message that this kind of behaviour cannot be condoned.

Once the episode died down, there was intense pressure on the management and the union minister to reinstate the pilots but they laudably stuck to their guns.

That's why I was surprised to read that the new management was thinking about reinstating those dismissed during the ugly episode. This would to my mind set a very poor precedent and undo a lot of the good work done.

Second, the airline has been looking at recruiting more pilots but it's not clear whether it needs them. If sources within the airline are to be believed, roughly 49-50 aircraft operate every day (a significant proportion of the fleet is on the ground on any given day for a variety of reasons). Instead of hiring pilots and crew members, Air India could try and take a leaf or two out of IndiGo's books and try and get more out of its existing pilots rather than hire new ones. Air India pilots have "coveted and cushy" jobs compared with private airlines with their flying hours every month far lower than the former. Adding pilots and crew means adding to the salary bill but it will also probably mean getting less output from the existing ones.

A third development that I read about recently is the new managing director's assertion that Air India would offer tickets at prices that would compare with trains. In 2012 - and much after most peers - Air India finally moved to a computerised revenue management system. Through the new system, prices of all tickets were determined based on demand and supply and there was very little scope for any human intervention. The system would maximise the revenue for any flight and revenues in general started showing a health growth.

But selling last-minute tickets at very low fares would amount to a reversal of the good revenue management practices adopted for some years now. The logic is that since seats are perishable, they may as well be sold cheap at the last minute rather than going empty.

The logic is flawed on many counts. To begin with, if you sell your leftover seats at throwaway prices, it is not going to bring in much revenue. Any airline can fill the planes by giving tickets away virtually for free but is that the goal? It also defeats the main principle on which selling is done - the earlier you book, the lower the fares. And third - and perhaps the most dangerous - is that it leaves open a window for discretion. Anyone within the airline or outside with influence can try and get hold of cheaper tickets and it cannot be questioned. One can always say they were last-minute sales.