Hard facts

News of the joint venture between the Tata group and AirAsia was leaked to the media almost as soon as the application was filed and the documents, too, were freely available. Not so with the Tata-Singapore Airlines joint venture. That news was disseminated via a company press release. The difference lay in the manner in which the applications were filed. The first application was filed in a hard copy and since the department of civil aviation demands 12 or 13 copies it was all too easy for a leak to occur. With Tata-SIA, the application was filed online and the Tata group also set out most (but not all) of the information in a press release at the same time. Online filing makes leaks difficult since they are easy to trace electronically. Of course, that did not mean the application stayed online within the ministry - but it took three or four days after the announcement for the documents to come out in the open.