‘No money to buy Boeing planes’
Even as he defended the government’s controversial decision to purchase 111 aircraft for Air India, Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi has admitted that the national carrier does not have the money to pay for 27 Boeing 787s that it has ordered.
He told a TV news channel that the delivery of the 27 aircraft had been delayed by Boeing for three years and there was no decision on whether the order would be confirmed or cancelled. He said if these were delivered, there was no money to pay for them.
“I don’t have the money to pay...I cannot beg the finance minister all the time for the money. It is difficult, this is the position now. The government cannot say we are confirming or we are rejecting, the workers also know that now...but it is not delivered so far, we have not paid so far. I don’t have the money to pay for it also,” the minister told the channel.
The CAG report, tabled in Parliament on Thursday, has strongly criticised the decision to buy the planes from Boeing and Airbus calling it a “recipe for disaster,” the merger of AI and Indian Airlines, bilaterals etc.
Defending the expansion plans, Ravi later told reporters that it was a collective decision and all due processes were followed by the civil aviation ministry, the government and the airline. Ravi said it was in 2002 that the government had decided to acquire more aircraft for Air India with the airline board’s approval. The BJP-led NDA was in power then.
Justifying the aircraft order in the face of growing air traffic, Ravi said, in March 2004, the combined fleet strength of the erstwhile state-run carriers Air India and Indian Airlines was 93. “Even after Air India Express (low cost arm of AI) coming into being, the fleet strength now is only 81”. The CAG report is likely to come up in the next few weeks before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament headed by senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi.
The man in the eye of the storm – former civil aviation minister Praful Patel – during whose regime the purchase orders were signed – strongly defended the deal. According to him, it was taken at a time of dynamic changes in the aviation sector which increased competition and made it essential for the merged airline to acquire new aircraft to keep afloat. Patel said: “Air India was functioning with planes that were 20 years old.
We were in a Catch-22 situation. If we wanted to do well we needed new aircraft but were also aware that the company's financial situation would not have permitted it.
