Letters: Make AI autonomous

With reference to "Keeping Air India away from a sordid cycle" (April 11), it is a matter of grave concern that our national carrier, once a pride of the nation, is in a soup. In all fairness, the airline continues to be run "for any by" politicians and bureaucrats. They have been more than happy to immensely benefit from Air India's largesse, so dutifully extended to them by its "yes boss" culture since its inception.

The author points out that "there are multiple failures at multiple levels for multiple years" even as inefficiency is institutionalised and no one is ever penalised. He is also right in saying that "no other airline would have survived these statistics - upwards of Rs 40,000 crore in debt, eight years of loss-making operations, and reportedly barely nine out of 370 routes that are not making losses".

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Perhaps the management knows the government is always there to bail it out of a crisis. It's a different matter that it has miserably failed to learn any lessons from its dubious past. The best course would be to make it a fully autonomous organisation headed by a civil aviation expert drawn from the private sector (preferably outside India).

Kumar Gupt, Panchkula

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