Sharjah 24 – AFP: Tea-to-steel conglomerate Tata is buying back the struggling Air India, 89 years after founding it as Tata Air and half a century after its nationalisation, the Indian government announced Friday.
The airline was founded in 1932 with the first flight piloted by Tata's eponymous chairman himself, flying mail and passengers in a single-propeller de Havilland Puss Moth from Karachi to Bombay.
Tata Air expanded around South Asia, offering a slice of the high life with Bollywood actresses in its adverts and at one point commissioning Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali to design its ashtrays.
The airline was nationalised by the Indian government in the 1950s and in the decades that followed the "Maharaja of the Skies" became synonymous with the hopes and ambitions of the newly independent country.
But in the 1990s Air India began to struggle with competition on domestic and international routes from Gulf carriers and no-frills airlines, and the firm started amassing huge losses and debts.
Successive Indian governments tried to privatise the company but its debts and New Delhi's insistence on retaining a stake put off would-be buyers.
Finally last year Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, seeking to sell of a raft of state assets, agreed to take bids for the entire company but to retain some of what the airline owes.
In addition the government is also selling a 50 percent stake in Air India SATS Airport Services, which provides cargo and ground handling services.
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