My first business chronicle of this year and what makes it interesting is that it is written by an insider who has spent almost 2 decades with the beleaguered airliner.
How Air India from being almost a monopoly with dominant market share and the preferred airlines for anyone flying out of India between the 50s to 80s became the government's biggest liability as we know of it today. What historical reasons helped it become one of the best international airlines under the leadership of JRD Tata.
What factors led to this downfall, how did the airlines cope or rather what did the airlines not do to cope with the opening up of competition post the liberalisation era.
What kind of political intervention or patronage took place at crucial junctures in the organisation, indecisiveness or lack of leadership, apathy from governments starting from the mid 90s and confused bureaucrats without any knowledge of the airline industry , incompetence from Management, frequent leadership change at the senior level, avoidable fleet expansion plans, high handedness of the employee unions, Mis-managed merger with Indian Airlines, a board of directors with hardly any powers to act on tough decisions etc etc are obviously the critical factors that led to the downfall of Air India and are written in full detail in the book.
One gets to know about the dynamics of how a Public sector unit typically works and how decision making happens. A good overview of the airline business in the 90s and early part of 2000.
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