Many years ago, I read a shocking revelation.
It was a report that said that if you took all the P&L’s of ALL THE AIRLINES of the World and put them together, you would see A LOSS.
That means that from day 1, Airlines have COLLECTIVELY lost money!
I don’t have that report, but there is an interesting blog on Freakonomics that kind of hints at the same message – https://bit.ly/trh-freako
As we see around us in India, The Big, Bold and Beautiful KINGFISHER AIRLINES is really struggling and how! They have debt restructuring issues, unpaid bills etc etc. If it were NOT the UB Group’s Balance Sheet money, that airline would probably be in the Hangars by now.
Also, if you remember, in the mid 90’s, Modiluft, Damania Airlines, East-West etc went out of Business.
Sahara Airlines was a skeleton from Day 1 – it was the curse of Naresh Goyal to inherit it.
So, I have a completely different view on the Air India mess:
– If the sharpest, brightest, cleverest and most nimble business men and women of the WORLD struggle to make money in Airlines, what makes the stupid Govt. of India even THINK that they can compete and win in such a harsh business that others have failed in???
– I mean think of ‘yourself’. It takes you to move oceans and mountains to achieve success in whatever you do. Can you imagine a lackadaisical lazy govt. employee ever doing what you do??
– Its all nice and fine fro CAG to rip apart Air India and blame everyone for the mess. I am sure Praful Patel has a LOT to answer about. But the question is – why even BOTHER making the Govt run an Airline?
– By encouraging such ventures, we gift corruption, incompetence and malpractice to ourselves. I think the Govt. is equally to BLAME for even allowing the Business of Air India to continue – forget how its run.
I QUESTION WHY – NOT HOW.
My humble view is that the more we ADMIT to what we CAN and CANNOT do – as individuals, start up’s, Companies and Govt – the more responsible we will be to the people who TRUST and FUND US.
The best next step is to JUST SHUT DOWN this STINKING SNAKE PIT CALLED Air India and learn never to do such mistakes again.
BYE BYE DUDE – YOU ARE FIRED
PS – I had posted this negative post on Air India on therodinhoods called ‘If the Maharaja is Nanga, why I am I supplying the Pyjama‘
*********