Air-India to rationalise overseas offices, reopen some
Monday, 20 January 2003, 20:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: India's flag carrier Air-India (A-I), which is finalising its fleet acquisition plans, intends to reopen some overseas offices it had closed down last year and set up new offline centres, an official said here. "As we add more fleet and newer destinations, we will open new offices and also reopen some of those that we had closed down in Europe," A-I spokesman Jitendra Bhargava told IANS. Bhargava said the airline was working on fleet acquisition for long- and short-haul flights and had plans to start flying to several new destinations. "We have opened an office in Frankfurt and one in Rome will be set up soon," he said, adding that there were no plans to shut down any more offices for now. The A-I management is reportedly in favour of closing down some more offices, apart from those in Europe that were shut last year such as Geneva, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Budapest. It cites the need to cut establishment costs. The airline's board, however, is against the move. It argues that in order to mark its presence in centres with which the airline has entered into code-share agreements or where A-I had kicked off new routes, it would need to have an office. A-I plans to induct seven small capacity long-range aircraft in 2003-04 and gradually take its fleet size to 36 by adding 12 long-range and 14 short-range aircraft by 2006-07. Bhargava denied reports that the airline was looking to hand over operations in all centres to general sales agents (GSAs - who are contracted by the airline for tickets and booking). "In our offline stations, GSAs work in league with our own officers." Two years ago, a parliamentary panel had asked A-I to replace GSAs with consolidators in all its centres. Consolidators buy bulk tickets directly from the airline at prices below the published price and sell them at a profit. The tickets come cheaper for travellers. But so far this has been done in very few centres. According to officials, all such moves would have to wait till the finalisation of the fleet augmentation.
Source: IANS
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