【By VIKAS BAJAJ and HEATHER TIMMONS／王麗娟譯】

MUMBAI — In what has been a bad year for airlines everywhere, Air India has suffered from a series of particularly painful — and at times embarrassing — misfortunes.

The struggling governmentowned carrier’s already uneven reputation has been further tarnished in recent months by rats on a plane, a strike by senior pilots and a midair fistfight between pilots and flight attendants.

The embarrassing events and the airline’s dire financial situation — it is expected to lose more than $1 billion in the current business year, and the government tentatively pledged about $1.1 billion in bailout money to it recently — has prompted many to ask: Why is the Indian government still running an airline?

The question is particularly relevant in a country that has more poor people than any other nation and where just a tiny percentage of the people fly.

Frequent domestic and international fliers prefer airlines other than Air India, which has lost significant market share since the country liberalized commercial aviation in the 1990s.

Rajeev Malik, an economist with Macquarie Securities, said Air India’s problems are becoming a metaphor for India’s incomplete economic reforms: policy makers have a long list of priorities but they are handling the tasks inadequately or not at all.

“There is little certainty over the final outcome,” he said.

Many analysts say government ownership is a root cause of Air India’s most pressing problems. In 2007, for instance, the government forced the airline into a poorly conceived merger with Indian Airlines, which was also state-owned. Politicians have influenced the company’s dealings with labor unions, leaving the airline with a much bigger and better-paid staff of 31,000 than it can afford.

Employees, too, say Air India lacks direction.

“We feel like an orphan. Every three years we get a new mother and a new father,” said Captain Shailendra Singh, president of the Indian Commercial Pilots Association.

A spokesman for the airline, Jitendra Bhargava, said the carrier had a three-year turnaround plan. “All airlines worldwide are in a problem. The Indian airlines are in more of a problem,” he said.

Air India was founded in 1932 as Tata Airlines by J. R. D. Tata, a member of the Indian business family, and Nevill Vincent, a former pilot with the Royal Air Force. The government took a minority stake in the airline after independence in 1947 and nationalized it fully in 1953.

Several efforts to privatize the airline have faltered because of political opposition.

The series of unfortunate events in the last two months has only heightened the perception that the airline is troubled.

In September, a flight to Toronto was delayed 11 hours as employees hunted rats that had scurried onto the plane while it was being cleaned. The airline worried that the rats might chew through wiring.

That same day, senior pilots began calling in sick to protest the airline’s plans to cut their pay as much as 50 percent. The incident disrupted dozens of flights for four days.

Last month, pilots and flight attendants brawled in front of passengers on a plane flying to India from the United Arab Emirates. One attendant said a pilot had molested her and shoved her. The pilots said that was not true.

The public travails of Air India have been “worse than the drama in a bad Bollywood movie,” said Mr. Malik, the economist, referring to India’s film industry. But, he added, “even the worst Bollywood movie has a happy ending.”

【2009-11-17/聯合報/G9版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS】