I was pleasantly surprised to read the following item in one of the emails circulated by some of our retired executives.

The airline on Sunday announced :

...... a dedicated program to offer its passengers enhanced cabin experience, with increased emphasis on maintaining high standards of cleanliness and safety on its aircraft. "To be managed by dedicated senior management of ED-level, immediate action will be taken on the feedback shared by the passengers, cabin crew and cabin engineers. Senior executives will undertake surprise checks to monitor and supervise the safety and cleanliness inside and outside the aircraft," said a statement issued by the airline.

I commend the new CMD on his initiative to improve the product that is being offered in the market and hope that he will continue to act in this proactive manner.  I believe I speak on behalf of most of my former colleagues when I say to Mr. Lohani that he has our best wishes and hopes that he will be successful.

And now on a lighter note, has anyone met his “double”?  I have.

On one of my visits to London, Asghar Ali Dharamsey had mentioned to me that he knew a person who looked exactly like me.  I laughed and told him that he was mistaken.  Asghar said that one day, he would introduce us both.

It so happened that I was transiting London on one of my business trips and was planning to stay one night with Asghar.  He received me at LHR and drove me to his home.  While he was parking his car, I entered the living room and saw a young lady sitting there.  She looked up and said “that was pretty quick”.  I must have had a very puzzled expression on my face and so, she kept very quiet.  I introduced myself and now she had a very puzzled look on her face.

Fortunately for both of us, Asghar, accompanied by another person walked in at that moment and I looked at the latter in wonderment.  I thought I was looking at a mirror and so did he.  He happened to be a Pakistani who lived in Europe and the young lady was his fiancee.

What a memorable occasion for both of us and also for his fiancee who said that she had difficulty separating us.  He had gone to fetch his car and she was surprised that he had returned so quickly; hence her earlier remark.

Getting back to the fares between India and the U.K., IATA sent its Traffic Director, H. Don Reynolds to Bombay to convince Air-India to withdraw the Emigrant Fare.  I received Don at the airport.  He spent that day with Jimmy and Shirin Guzder of Indtravels/AirFreight, whom he had known for a long time.

The next day, they dropped him off at my office and we met with Air Marshal Chaturvedi and Mr. Kooka.  Don spoke of the sanctity of the unanimity rule and how Air-India was setting a poor example of disharmony and not using the IATA mechanism of getting agreements by consultations.

We told Don Reynolds that Air-India had followed IATA’s policy to the letter and had fare agreements which were unanimously negotiated.  Air-India had no quarrel with such a rule, but the blatant violations of these agreements by the Arab and Middle East Agreements had rendered the fare agreements a pure paper exercise.  Their market practices, particularly the setting up of GSAs and Consolidators to offer illegal discounts had taken away Air-India’s legitimate 3rd and 4th freedom traffic.

There was no going back, we told Don Reynolds.  

After the meeting in the MD’s office, I took Don back to my office so that he could dictate a “coded” telex to the Director General of IATA and I must digress here to relate an interesting anecdote.  My Secretary, Rao took Don’s dictation and when the latter asked him if his dictation was clear, Rao answered by shaking his head.  Don started to dictate his telex once again and I interrupted him and said that in India, a shake of the head was the same as a nod and signified OK.

Don spent that evening with me before leaving back for Geneva and over dinner, I told him that what we had achieved by the introduction of the westbound Emigrant Fare was only the beginning.  Air-India was going to take this matter right through to its logical conclusion.  Gone were the days when we were willing to spend weeks in long and arduous negotiations only to have the agreements violated by the Arabs and other 6th freedom airlines.

I told Don quite categorically, that the Arabs were not the only culprits.  European carriers, such as KLM and Air France were equally at fault and we could see our legitimate traffic being siphoned off.  In other words, the gloves were now “OFF” and the battle had just begun.

The U.K. originating market was our next target.  We sent a Market Research Team to the U.K. to study the market potential and come up with a plan to get our rightful market share.  The Team was led by Randhir Singh and included Michael Mascarenhas and Kanwal Jasuja.  They spent almost a month and produced a series of recommendations which included not only the establishment of a low round trip fare for the VFR (Visiting Friends & Relatives) market, but also the opening of new offices, such as one in Southhall. 

This Report was discussed at a Top Management meeting and negotiations commenced with the British so that we could jointly sponsor the introduction of such a fare.  Unfortunately, the British declined to agree and we responded by going unilaterally at this market.

Air-India Charters Ltd. (AICL) chartered aircraft from Air-India and commenced operating flights between Delhi and Ostend in Belgium, since we were denied traffic rights by the British.  An agreement was negotiated with British Air Ferries (BAF) to operate flights between Southend in the U.K. and Ostend to connect with the AICL flights.  A consortium of Indian Agents was mobilized to get passengers to travel on the connecting BAF/AICL flights.

The success of this venture was soon proven when the British asked us for talks to introduce  a low round trip fare - low enough so that the 6th freedom operators would have difficulty in undercutting it.  We established such a fare and then to ensure the success of this venture, I suggested to Mr. Kooka, the establishment of an “Ethnic Sales” cell in the U.K. headed by Randhir Singh.  He agreed and I must admit here that I do not believe that even today, Randhir has fully forgiven me for sending him to London.  He had been looking at a posting where he would be head of an online station.

During this entire period, I must have myself traveled a number of times to the U.K.  I met many of the agents that Randhir and his team had cultivated.  We met them at their offices, we had drinks and meals with them in their homes and sang and danced to Indian music in their Living rooms.  In other words, we established very close bonds with this larger team which got Air-India its legitimate share of the Indian ethnic market.  Eventually, at the suggestion of the R. D. - U.K. and Randhir Singh, we appointed a General Sales Agent.

As an interesting aside, I must relate here that when we appointed the GSA, we limited his scope to the Indian ethnic market.  PanAm objected to this stating that the IATA Resolution on GSAs did not allow us to limit the GSAs scope of operations and took us before the IATA Compliance Committee.  Nani Palkiwala, India’s famous lawyer and future Ambassador to the USA, represented us at this hearing.  Joe Andrade and I assisted him, but the ruling was in PanAm’s favor.  However, no penalties were imposed upon us and AI was instructed to open the entire market to the GSA.  While, we accepted this ruling on paper, in practice, however, we continued our restrictions on the GSA.

At Mr. Kooka’s request, T.K. Rao, Manager - Charters and I made a detailed study of the European market to ascertain the potential of operation charters under the AICL Banner.  We toured Western and Northern Europe and submitted our Report which I believe, ended up on a shelf in Mr. Kooka’s office.

To the best of my knowledge, AICL never did get off the ground until quite recently.  After Mr. Kooka, the next Chairman was Nari Dastur and I did take over the reins for a 2 year period from 1978 till I left Air-India in 1980.

Our next major task was the USA - India market.  There were two very important issues here.

First, our Bilaterals with the British.  They insisted that we were carrying far too many 5th freedom passengers and opposed the introduction of the Boeing 747 on the India - U.K. - USA route by Air-India.  We held a number of meetings; all but one of which, I attended.  Throughout these meetings, I had maintained that the existing Bilateral authorized us to substitute any aircraft and that the Indian side should stand firm.  The Indian team was led by the Aviation Secretary, Mr. Narottam Sehgal who, while appreciating my viewpoint, was keen to get an agreement.

However, I was eventually over-ruled and in fact, excluded from the Indian Team at the final meeting with the British.  This meeting came to a successful conclusion and it was agreed that AI could upgrade its equipment provided AI paid to BA a sum of money for each 5th freedom (LON/NYC/LON) passenger carried over a limit, which was pegged at the number being carried at that point of time. This figure could go up as and when the end-to-end India - USA traffic increased.  As a matter of record, this compromise proposal was initiated by Y.Y. Ajila, our Planning Manager.

Mr. Kooka came back from the meeting and called me to his office.  He said that while he appreciated my unhappiness with the agreement, he supported it because time was critical and we could not delay the introduction of the 747s.  At the same time, he said that he had faith in my ability to find a way out of paying this “royalty” to the British.

I promptly gathered my marketing team and we came to the view that we had no choice but to raise the number of FUD (flight uplift/discharge) passengers India - USA and to this end go directly into the U.S. market with a low excursion fare to generate additional traffic.  Accordingly, we proposed the introduction of a $600 fare at the next IATA fares conference.  However, because of the unanimity rule, we could not get the level that we would have ideally liked and had to compromise on a figure, which if memory serves me right, was $650..

We did generate considerable interest in this fare, but our market studies showed that we were being undercut by not only the 6th freedom operators, such as Air France, KLM and Lufthansa but also carriers like Kuwait who in combination with TWA were offering much lower fares in the market.  In fact, on our of our marketing trips to the USA, B.K. Mangaokar and I came across Flyers being distributed among the Indian Student community which offered a fare of $575 from NYC to DEL/BOM on TWA/Kuwait flights over London.

I, therefore, proposed to Mr. Kooka that we drop the round trip fare from NYC to BOM/DEL to $450. It was my view that while this fare was uneconomical if maintained for too long a period, it would be a “two-edged sword”.  It would be very difficult for our competitors to undercut it and make a profit.  Additionally, this would have give us the necessary tool to substantially increase our FUD India - USA traffic thus reducing, if not eliminating, the “royalty” payment to the British.

It was this second objective that appealed most to Mr. Kooka who said and I believe that I am quoting him accurately - “Inder, let’s sock it to the British”.

Having got his complete support, I prepared a paper for submission to Air Marshal Chaturvedi, our M.D.  The meeting in his office was quite stormy with Mr. K. K. Unni, our Asst. M.D., saying “Inder, you will bankrupt us”.  I expressed the view that this was an introductory fare and that once we had achieved our objective, we would increase the level keeping in the forefront of our minds, the two objectives. 

I maintained that any inactivity on our part “would also have the effect of bankrupting us”.

With Mr. Kooka’s support, I got Management approval.  Mr. Kooka and I flew to Delhi and had an informal meeting with Mr. Narottam Sehgal who not only supported the propsal, but gave it his blessing.  We then held meetings with the DGCA and the Ministry issued a Government Order requiring Air-India to introduce a non-stop economy class round trip fare NYC - DEL/BOM at the $450 level.

We filed this fare with the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board and informed the IATA Secretariat that we would be introducing this fare on 30 days notice.

The $450 fare exceeded our wildest expectations and not only did we develop an entirely new market to India, we NEVER paid a cent to the British for carriage of 5th freedom traffic.

It was one of my proudest moments when I had a visitor to my office who announced “Inder, my heartiest congratulations.  You were absolutely right and I was wrong in opposing you”.  The visitor was none other than Mr. K.K. Unni and I have never felt so motivated in my entire career.

It also goes to show, that one should always follow one’s convictions and the rewards will be forthcoming.  However, to do so, one must be encouraged and motivated by the support of his/her superiors.  I had that support from Mr. Kooka.