HOMECOMING OF THE MAHARAJA

On 8th October, After a gap of 68 years, debt- laden national carrier Air India returned to its founders Tata Sons, ending a decades-long struggle to offload the money- losing flag carrier.

Talace Pvt Ltd, a unit of the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate placed a winning bid of Rs 18,000 crore to re-acquire the airline more than half a century after it ceded the control to the Centre. This will give the group full control of Air India and it's low-cost arm, Air India Express as well as a 50% stake in the ground handling company Air India SATS Airport Services Pvt Ltd(AISATS). Of the bid amount of Rs 18,000 crore, the TATAS will pay Rs 2,700 crore in cash, while taking remaining Rs 15,300 crore as debt. The group will also have to pay around Rs9,185 crore on account of capitalized lease obligations of 42 leased aircraft, primarily the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. And have to retain 12,000 old employees of Air India for first year of operation. The new owner can't transfer the Air India logos at least for five years. After that, these can be transferred only to an Indian entity.

The process of Air India's sale began in July 2017 and the government has received 7 expressions of interest by December last year, more than three years after Tata Sons failed to get even a single bid of Air India. Beats the Rs 15,100 crore offer by a consortium led by SpiceJet promoter Ajay Singh and the reserve price of Rs 12,906 crore set by the government for the sale of its 100 percent stake in the loss-making carrier. The experts termed it as a win to win transaction as Tata Sons, which operates two airlines Vistara and AirAsia India, will become the second- largest airline in the domestic market with around a 25 percent market share while becoming the largest Indian airline on international routes.

JRD Tata founded Tata Aviation Service in 1933 with an investment of Rs 2 lakh and piloted the first flight of Air India, then called Tata Air Mail. It soon became a profit making venture. Tata changed the name to Tata Airlines in 1938. After World War II ended JRD Tata renamed the airlines as Air India in 1946 and went public as a joint-stock company.

The end of World War II had made it clear that the British control of India was a matter of time. By 1946,there were talks of nationalization of privately owned airlines in India. In 1953,the government paid another 3 crore to purchase other domestic airlines making nationalization of civil aviation complete.

After the liberation Tatas came back to the trail and launched a domestic airline, The Vistara. And finally won the bid beating the other 3 bidders who entered the Air India's race.