Struggling hard to tide over the financial crisis , the State-owned Air India has made valiant efforts to improve its on-time performance (OTP), achieving 100 per cent on-time performance of its flights on September 20 and 21 from Mumbai and Delhi. Overall OTP of Air India this month has been over 80 per cent on the domestic and international networks.
At a review meeting taken by Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi here on Friday, the new Air India Chairman and Managing Director Rohit Nandan gave a broad view on the overall improvement in the operational and financial performance of the carrier. The meeting was also attended by Civil Aviation Secretary Nasim Zaidi and other senior ministry officials.
Mr. Nandan said that on-time performance of Air India flights was being continuously monitored at the highest level. All executive directors of the regions have been made responsible for monitoring, analysing the causes of the delay and taking adequate measures to resolve the problem.
The operational performance of August showed a significant improvement over the corresponding month last year. Whereas passenger revenue went up by 12.3% (from Rs.889 crore to Rs.998 crore), the network Passenger Load Factor (PLF) increased from 67.7% to 70.3%. The PLF on the domestic sector showed a jump from 64.3% last year to 73.1% this year and yields also rose by 14% across the network.
An Integrated Operations & Control Centre (IOCC) has been launched at T3, Delhi and a computerised crew rostering system would also be put in place by June 2012. The IOCC has resulted in real-time monitoring and reduction of delays and turn-around time. The operational losses during 2011-12 fiscal have been steadily coming down from Rs.507 crore in April 2011 to Rs.266 crore in August 2011, showing an improvement in the operational performance. However, on account of the increase in fuel prices the airline incurred an additional expense on fuel of Rs.650 crore during April-August 2011 period vis-à-vis last year.
