How to run down a world class airline 101

 India Airline, the monopoly airline of India, the first choice of all Indians, reported a whooping $2 billion loss. Can you believe this? And Air Garuda of Indonesia, reported a 100% growth in profit for 2024 to 2025 and on target to hit a 50% growth for 2025 to 2026. Air Garuda is performing many times better than first world Air India, Can you believe it?

Air India not only has big losses and looking like this will last for another few years at least, its aircraft are losing flight control in the air, losing height in the air, its pilots are caught for taking drugs. And these are only a few things that are reported in the news. What about those not reported in the news, those deliberately covered up?

How to run down a world class airline, from profitable to losses? Learn to run an airline like Air India. But before I start on the prescription to run down a world class airline, let me just say a few things about world class airline. It has a great reputation for all the good things, safety, reliability, good management, good quality of service, good support staff, good technical and maintenance support and good, well qualified and professional pilots with unquestionable training and flying records. And for all these good things, a world class airline can charge premium prices. The customers are willing to pay for safety and quality with no compromises.

OK, how to run down a world class airline? Learn to do everything Air India is doing. Hire Indian management, hire Indian crew, Indian technical and maintenance support, Indian pilots, Indian quality of service and flight track records. No need to look too far. The quality of aircraft, the age of aircraft, the pilots, yeah, this is the most crucial factor. An aircraft can come falling down from the sky when the pilots are questionable, from questionable training and experience and behaviours like taking drugs. And the technical and maintenance crew, the engineers and technicians, and the parts they used to replace any worn out parts or parts that needed to be replaced.

Why is Air India not a world class airline? Oops, correct me if I am mistaken, that Air India is a world class premier airline. The quality of management may affect the revenue and profitability of the airline. But what are the high net worth passengers paying for, paying more than other airlines? It is safety, the top most concern of all airline passengers. No one want to pay anything when safety is questionable. No one would want to pay more when safety is compromised by substandard questionable pilots and maintenance of the aircraft.

A world class airline puts safety and quality of the aircraft top most in its offer to their premium clients. There must be no compromise on the safety and quality of the aircraft. These are the cardinal principles not to be violated. Once customers found out they have been shortchanged, they would migrate to other more worthy airlines. Would any silly management be willing to save a few dollars to compromise on these two cardinal principles and still want to charge premium prices and want to continue to be called world class airline? Would any world class airline dare to say we hire substandard pilots, we hired substandard maintenance crew and we charge premium prices? 

Important points to note. Customers willing to pay extra for the newest aircraft maintained by the best technicians and engineers and flew by the best pilots, not substandard cheap pilots.

This is lesson 101 in keeping an airline world class. Stupidity has no cure.