Shruti Pandit

THOUGH OPERATING IN ONE OF the fastest-growing airline markets in the world, Air India and Indian have for some years now been in terminal decline. The former is a classic example of a flag carrier plagued by the ills of a bloated workforce and an aging fleet, the latter a largely domestic operation that has ceded market steadily to nimbler privately owned rivals for the past decade.

IT WAS AN ADVERTISEMENT THAT STRUCK A CHORD among millions of Indians. A poor carpenter in a village carves an aircraft model out of a block of wood for his school-going child. The child loves the model and plays with it all day, even placing it by his pillow while sleeping. Fast-forward 20 years to the now aged carpenter, who is surprised to receive an airline ticket by mail from his son who lives far away in the city. The whole village shares the carpenter's joy as he leaves for the airport to visit his son on what is obviously his first airplane trip.

AFTER A DREAM RUN THAT SAW the doubling of capacity in two years and the opening up of dozens of routes all over the country, India's domestic airline industry seems to be headed for a hiatus. Signs of weakness in the sector are now there for all to see. Every airline is battling red ink and the carriers are expected to tot up aggregate losses of more than $500 million for the year to March 31, 2007.

Travel almost anywhere in the Asia/Pacific region and you will see Indian aircraft engineers and technicians at work at airlines and maintenance outfits. Middle Eastern carriers such as Emirates, Qatar Airways and Gulf Air also employ a large number of expatriate engineers poached from Indian Airlines and Air India.