Air India suffered Rs 430 crore loss when Pakistan closed airspace: Hardeep Singh Puri

“In order to privatise it, there is a turnaround plan in order to give it operational efficiency and also to make it profitable in the immediate term. We will be ending the financial year 2018-19 on March 31 with an operating loss of something like Rs 7,000 crore. But in the financial year 2019-20… the airline is expected to make a profit,” he said.

Explained | Pakistan re-opens airspace; how this will impact Indian airlines

The government, he said, “proposed to establish an alternate mechanism and that alternate mechanism will take the decisions for privatisation…Some of these factors are beyond the government’s control. Forty per cent of the operating expense of an airline goes in what is called aviation turbine fuel. Then you have geopolitical developments. We were very happy yesterday when the airspace was reopened by neighbouring country. Air India had already incurred a loss of something like Rs 430 crore in the four months or so…” he said.