Air India to claim operational improvement before GoM

New Delhi: Badly struggling flag carrier, Air India, will try and present a more positive outlook at a crucial meeting of a ministerial panel which is slated to consider its turnaround plans. Air India will inform the Group of Ministers (GoM) that bad finances apart it has registered considerable operational improvement in areas such as passenger load-factor, revenue-passengers and capacity utilisation over the past three years.

"The passenger load factor, which indicates the efficiency of utilizing seat capacity, has improved from 59.5 % in 2008-09 to 66.7 % in the year 2010-11," the company will state in its presentation.

According to the company, various steps to integrate operations between merged arms have been achieved since April 2009, such as shifting to a single 'AI' flight-code and using single software for ticketing.

"Flight planning system has also been initiated which will result in saving fuel," the airline's presentation is due to outline for the GoM.

It says that as many as 46 old aircraft have been removed from its fleet and new ones inducted. "It is note-worthy the available seat-kilometres have been maintained, despite retiring these aircraft,'' the presentation says.

According to the airline, the primary reason for continued losses was on account of high interest cost on loans taken for buying new aircraft as well as for working capital, which shot up from Rs1,722 crore in 2008-09 to Rs3,285 crore in 2010-11.