What Air India needs to do to shed its natural sloth

Bringing back its glory days will be a fitting homage to JRD Tata

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THE TATAS ACQUIRED Air India last year after losing it nearly seven decades ago. She was an enchanting princess when the government snatched her through nationalisation in 1953. Air India! The name conjured images of exotic destinations and distant mystic lands. It had romance. If you were an air-hostess, you were a young goddess in the skies as unattainable as an apsara. If you were an Air India pilot, you were the most sought after knight in the skies.

The Tatas have to figure out how to make Air India autonomous for quick decision-making, and make it nimble and sensitive to achieve excellence.

That was then, when J.R.D. Tata ran the airline. She has now returned to the Tatas―decrepit and severely dented in her reputation for customer service, with shabby aircraft, frequent delays and cancellations, and horrendous passenger experience.

Paris, the prince of Troy, stole Helen, the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. Menelaus led a war against Troy, killing Paris. While one can imagine what passions drive men to wage wars to repossess the women they love, one wonders what possessed Ratan Tata to win back Air India, now an impoverished relict.

Yet there was great cheer in the country when the Tatas took over Air India. There was hope in the air that the national carrier will blaze a trail once again under the famed Tata leadership and recapture its glory days.

But we jumped the gun. Stuff happened. A drunken passenger urinated on a lady in the business class of the airline on a flight from New York to Delhi and exposed himself to her and to the fellow passengers. Close on the heels of that horrendous incident, news emerged that there was one more case of a male passenger peeing on a lady on another Air India flight. It never rains but pours. It sent shock waves and has damaged the reputation of the airline which the Tatas were trying to rebuild from the ashes.

We all know Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. In aviation, Murphy’s Law is: If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will install it that way. In Air India matters, one is now tempted to say, you never know what will befall you next time you fly.

The moot point is: How do you handle a situation when things go wrong? That the Air India crew bungled it is evident. They did not use their judgment while serving liquor to the man with the loose fly, and did not swiftly discipline him and restrain him to his seat. They had no empathy for the victim and were insensitive to her request to shift her to another seat or upgrade her. That is unforgivable.

They put emotional pressure on the lady to accept the offender’s apology and compromise, and urged her not to press charges with the police. All these show they were unprofessional, thoroughly incompetent and uncaring. One can probably attribute all this to the fact that the old Air India’s deeply entrenched, indifferent, bureaucratic culture cannot be wished away by letters and lectures by the Tata management.

It will take long rigorous training and deep cultural transformation. It is by no means easy. A moribund organisation has to be shocked into action to overcome its natural sloth and complacency. Fixing the engines and shabby cabin interiors, or giving a fresh coat of paint and new liveries, is easier than changing the employees’ attitude and culture.

The Tatas are themselves like a large government. That won’t do in an airline. They have to figure out how to make Air India autonomous for quick decision-making, and make it nimble and sensitive to achieve excellence in customer service.

That takes us to the central question of the unspeakably repulsive episode. Yes, the captain and crew thoroughly screwed up. But the lady sent a letter about her nauseating experience to the chairman of Air India, who is also the chairman of Tata Sons. Why all these defensive statements in cliched bureaucratese, a month later, that they share her distress and will strive to do better. Only after the media reported the incident did the airline go to the police, suspend the crew and order an inquiry.

One wonders why the Tata management was not shocked enough to spring into action with lightning speed. What was required was not good PR on how to contain or ward off bad publicity or strategising and deploying smart people to do damage control. The need of the hour was the good sense to do the right thing. The Air India chairman and the CEO should have immediately called a news conference and offered a sincere apology to the lady and her fellow passengers and the public who hold the Tatas in high esteem. What was needed was genuine remorse and a pledge that the Tatas will re-dedicate themselves to improving service excellence.

To stand up, look in the eyes of the public and apologise and seek forgiveness would have been the best way to redeem oneself and win back trust. That would have also sent the right message to the employees and the public.

J.R.D. Tata was unique. He was India’s first licensed pilot in 1929. He was a dashing aviator and a visionary entrepreneur. In 1932, he flew India’s first commercial flight carrying mail and two passengers from Karachi to Chennai via Mumbai on a single-engine hopping flight. That saw the birth of Tata Airlines, which eventually morphed into Air India in 1946. It was a pioneering feat.

JRD combined in himself all the magical qualities that make a great leader. Vision, magnanimity, charity, insight, decisiveness in complex situations, courage, charisma and talent for grooming younger people.

It may not be possible to find someone to replicate JRD today. It may not be necessary, either. It is a starkly different era, the aviation landscape has changed vastly and the Tatas are a sprawling global empire today. But JRD can inspire the top management of Tata Sons and Air India if they study how he ran the airline.

Air India may be a tiny unit in that conglomerate but it is a precious jewel in the Tata crown. Rebuilding quality in Air India seems an insurmountable challenge. But what is life without a challenge? And the Tatas have always overcome and thrived on challenges.

If the chairman of Air India brings back the glory days it will be a fitting homage to JRD.

Captain Gopinath is the founder of Air Deccan.

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