Why SIA should continue to plough its profit into loss making Air India - journalist Ven Sreenivasan

Walking away now would mean giving up that hard-won opportunity to get a piece of action in one of the world’s hottest aviation markets with a favourable combination of partners.

As the national carrier, Air India holds valuable international traffic rights and airport slots around the world. At home, it has a huge domestic network and enjoys strong brand recognition.

In the Tata group, SIA has a strong partner which brings to the table local knowledge, scale, brand and reputation. As Tata’s partner, SIA brings aviation expertise, operational discipline and customer service. In short, world class standards in airline operations....

SIA’s management must articulate the case clearly to its shareholders and the public here....

What kind of control will it take in the airline’s operations to ensure that its goals are met? How much operational control is Tata willing to give, and how much is the Indian government willing to tolerate?  CNA

The first three paragraphs are the reasons why SIA should continue to throw good money after bad money in Air India. The same narrative, India has a lot of potential for growth in the long long long term. With extraordinary Tata's strong local knowledge and everything Indian, and SIA's expertise, it is still failing and failing and failing and losing at least US$3 billion in the last two years and expecting to continue to lose in the next 10 years, meaning at least another US$10 billion assuming losing US$1 billion a year. Air India is admitting that despite Tata and SIA, nothing good will come from them to turn the ailing airline around.

Why so, after all Tata and SIA are the two knights in shining armour for the rescue? The answer is in the last two paragraph quoted above. It is about management control. SIA does not have management control to put its good management practices to run Air India. Tata did not have the expertise but still would not release control for SIA to do the job. These two points are the red herrings to dupe people into believing that with SIA and Tata, they could save Air India...when SIA will not be allowed to play any part. The Indians are so full of themselves, who is SIA to teach them how to such eggs? And Tata is anything but Indian and will do the Indian ways. If Tata can turn it around, the bleeding would have stopped or at least reduced. Both points are only good for talking rubbish.

LKY has been right all the time. If SIA cannot have management control, stay away. Don't be stupid. But someone thinks he is smarter than LKY and now stuck in this cowdung.  The Indian future, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a big IF. It is as good as fantasy. Even if SIA has complete control, the Indian culture and politics will make sure it will fail.

Oops, maybe follow DBS formula, pay up for the whole of Air India, called it Air India, SIA. And let the Indians to run it the way they know best and have remote control from Changi. Oops, oops, the Indians have been running it the way they think best and still losing money. There is no way no talent Singaporeans can help to turn it around if the smart Indians cannot do it. The Indians don't respect no talent Singaporeans. To them, they can teach Singapore how to become first world country. The only Singaporean that the Indians respect is LKY. Period.  

The bigger fear is for SIA to run and operate SIA with more Indian recruits for management, pilots and engineering team. This seems to be the thinking today, recruit more Indians to run SIA.

What do you think? Continue to dump its profit into the black hole for how long? What if the whole SIA is sucked into the black hole?