Well the bottom line is that they will require a fresh capital to get the airline back on heels. Now from where does that money come whether the Sahara family induces a new lease of life into the airline or they sell shares or bring some strategic investor thats a different story...

 

 Indeed in this current mess its the employees who have taken a big beating with no vision as to whether they are working for 9W or S2. I wonder how the CRJ pilots would be thinking who would have placed their papers to the management before being sold to Jet.

Running an airline has never been a joke being a capital intensive business plus due to slow rate of return infact i should say the long tenure of reaching the break even point makes it very important that only big corporations with deep pockets join this field...

But today what i see in indian aviation industry is that due to probably the boom every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to ride this boom by opening up an airline and then cleaverly wants to cut down his own risk by selling its shares in the open market. I remember how NG lobbied hard from preventing tata,s enter the global domestic aviation in partnership with SIA and he was successfull.... I reckon this would have never happened if TATA,s would have been running an airline....

 

 As far as running S2 is concerned the ball is in the lucknow,s family,s court they have to do decide how they wanna run it Lets see how th drama unfolds.......

the_380 wrote:

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S2 has a totally different story to tell. In the 90s bubble it invested a lot and it has never been able to recover from that debt.

But i wud love to see S2 taken over by IT

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I thought S2 was just a product of lack of vision and bad management (from the Sahara Parivar)? I would also love to see IT take over S2 (just so they get the slots and rights for overseas).

 

 Well whats the gurantee that IT has firm plans in place and has a vision. Personally i feel VM is more of those CEO types who is just desperately looking to sell shares of the airlines in the world market there by cut down his own personal risk.

 Unfortuantely the market conditions are not favouring him otherwise we would have seen Kingfisher airlines IPO too.  Then the experienced personnal who were running the show the damania brothers and nigel harwood have quit the airline. Just because u have money to invest and start an airline doesnt mean you are wise enough to operate one...

As i previously said its a big can of worms.....

and the climax is yet to come

vabby wrote:

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 Well whats the gurantee that IT has firm plans in place and has a vision.

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Of course no one has guarantees on things like this. But at least the moves are in the right direction.

There's money to be made in the internation markets from India. That requires aircraft, and IT has done the right thing by ordering the aircraft well in advance when they can negotiate a good deal and get slots firmed up (look at the mess AI/IC are in since they dont' have wide-bodies in place). That also requires permission to fly, which he's pursuing through all means.

IT has managed to get a tag of being a "premier" domestic carrier - with service/facilities that are the best of the lot (better than 9W/IC/DN etc.). This is also no mean feat - I'd like to see someone else come to that level.

IT has also got a decent fleet/route network in place, and are tied up with GDS systems in addition to the online web based sales of tickets.

All in all IT is definitely one of the better airlines in the market today. The one area they faltered was starting off as an LCC, but they changed course later on into a "full-service" carrier model. I wish their FFP would improve, and they would tie up with some international FFPs/Code shares, but I guess for that to happen, IT would have to prove itself through a few years of sustained operations.