Weekend Musings: Naya plane, naya uniform, naya loyalty program.. Badhiya hai!

Edition 41

Many advertisements live forever and one such has been the Asian Paints advertisement from 2004, featuring Sunil Babu who gets a call from his neighbour complimenting New Car, New Wife and New House (Naya Ghar, Nayi Gadi, Nayi Biwi, Badhiya Hai!) Badhiya Hai quips the neighbour. 

Much in line with the sentiment we are heralding into a new era for Air India. New planes, new uniforms and a new loyalty program. The airline has said that it has completed the first phase of its ambitious five year turnaround program. The next phase will see the refurbishment of aircraft, which starts in the second half of this year. The much anticipated expansion has been a dud so far, with some of the flights making it to the schedules but not to the reservations. 

Back to the advertisement, the same neighbour visits again after many years and continues to compliment the house but not the other two things. Here is where Air India would like to differ and would expect that the compliments increase over a period of time and that it starts making money at the same time hoping that the condition of the planes remains top notch. 

I often say that everybody knew that Kingfisher Airlines had deep pockets, nobody knew how deep they were. The Tata’s will be ethical and not divert loans as what is alleged with Kingfisher Airlines. However, no matter how deep the pockets – a time will come when the returns will have to start flowing for the group to say “Badhiya Hai” How soon will that come?

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