Open Skies Closed Minds

South Asian countries have allowed private airlines to fly domestic routes, but the winds of liberalisation have not yet wafted over the region's international carriers. It is still as difficult as ever before to fly between South Asian countries..Flip through any aviation trade journal today, and the coverage is dominated by the Asia-Pacific, the region with the fastest growing airline market in the world. There are gushing reviews of the annual air shows in Dubai and Singapore and gasps about the phenomenal growth of aviation in the region..But a note of caution: when they say Asia-Pacific, they do not include South Asia..As far as the international airline industry is concerned, South Asia is still that four hours of darkness between Burma and Afghanistan that you need to traverse on flights from East Asia to Europe..South Asia´s pioneer airlines, like Pakistan International and Air India, which used to be regarded as some of the best in the world in terms of service and equipment, now figure towards the bottom in passenger surveys. And while flying has got easier and better within South Asian countries, travelling between the region´s capitals is still an ordeal..So much of an ordeal, in fact, that on board a recent Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore to Kathmandu, were delegates from Sri Lanka on their way to Kathmandu to attend a UNICEF meeting. Despite the cost and hassle of travelling eight hours extra and a nightstop, South Asians find it more convenient to fly all the way to the edge of the Pacific than to get from one part of their region to another..More and more, it is the non-South Asian airlines that are filling in as a bridge between SAARC capitals, with better and more reliable service: British Airways is the favourite Dhaka-Delhi operator, Lufthansa has taken over the Karachi-Kathmandu sector let go by Royal Nepal, and Malaysian Airlines offers one of the better connections from Delhi to Karachi..South Asia´s own airlines, instead of strengthening their regional routes have actually regressed, abandoning important regional links between Rangoon, Lhasa, Kathmandu and Colombo. Most SAARC capitals still do not have direct air links, take Colombo-Dhaka or Islamabad-Delhi..With the notable exception of tiny Druk Air´s Paro-Kathmandu-Delhi flights, and those to Bangkok via Dhaka or Calcutta, and pia´s Colombo-Male link, South Asian governments have been extremely reluctant to part with intra-SAARC "fifth freedom" rights for their fellow regional carriers (which allows airlines to pick up passengers for onward journeys). Ironically, these rights have been granted to non-South Asian airlines, which are thus able to take advantage of passenger traffic between South Asian countries..Absence of flights has led to a huge shortage of seats on high-demand trunk routes such as Madras-Colombo, Delhi-Kathmandu or Delhi-Lahore. The India-Nepal bilateral agreement allows 4,000 seats a week, parcelled out mainly between Indian Airlines and Royal Nepal, even though the sector can easily handle twice that volume. Nepali negotiators who are trying to convince the Indian authorities to enlarge the quota ask why the land border between the two countries is "open", but the skies incongruously "closed".."I´m afraid people are just not looking at it on a regional basis and examining overall benefit," says retired captain, Lalit Manilal, a former Operations Manager for Indian Airlines..Airline as Bureaucracies.In a sense, it would be too much to expect South Asia´s nationalised airlines to be super-efficient when the governments that own them are themselves in disarray. And in inter-governmental negotiations, it seems everyone has decided to stand steadfastly by short-sighted protectionism..The faults and weaknesses of South Asian bureaucracies— mismanagement, ad-hocism, or lack of motivation—are reflected in their flag carriers. Privatisation would be an answer, but governments are reluctant to let go. Besides the all-important question of ´national pride´, one reason is that the industry is kickback-driven, and airline purchases are second only to defence contracts and mega-projects as a vital source of slush funds..Corruption in itself need not be an impediment to running a good airline, as the bigger Southeast Asian operators have shown. Governments, even in Japan, have been tainted by shady aircraft deals. The difference in South Asia seems to be the winner-takes-all attitude, the concept of raking it in while the going is good, and a crippling lack of managerial skills..Airlines are seen only as cash cows—to be milked either for the national exchequer or personal enrichment. All this results in what is obvious to regular flyers: low staff motivation, indifferent service, safety shortcuts, delayed flights, confusion over livery, overstretched routes, and flag carriers that have become the butt of jibes. One Nepali travel agent jokes that Royal Nepal is the most competitive international airline: it covers half the world with only three jets..Says an Air India captain who recently quit to go fly with a carrier in the Gulf: "Our officials want to prosper at the expense of the airline. One of the most sophisticated technologies the world has ever seen is in the hands of people who have difficulty running a bus service efficiently.".To be sure, there are South Asian operators that shine through the grime. Despite the troubles at home, stagnant tourism, and whiffs of corruption in aircraft purchases, Air Lanka stands out as the South Asian operator that is closest to East Asian airlines in equipment planning, service and attention for detail..Air Myanmar, which once held the world record for the airline with the most crashes in a year, has been transformed by its tie-up with Malay-sianAirlines. Bhutan´s Druk Air, with its compact fleet and modest regional spread, has carefully nurtured an image that reflects the country´s selective strategy for quality tourism. Some new domestic carriers in India have upgraded the quality of airline service on ground and in-flight..But these are exceptions, and protection has made the national flag carriers—Air India, Bangla Biman, Indian Airlines, Pakistan International and Royal Nepal—lazy and un-air-worthy. Held hostage to narrow nationalistic outlooks of governments and the airlines that they coddle, South Asia´s air travellers have become fatalistic by now..Privatise and Fly.Airline undercapacity is seen as a major bottleneck for the growth of travel and tourism in South Asia. In each country, the travel trade has been pestering the government to let the private sector step in if the national airline is not willing or able to increase seats available. Royal Nepal, for instance, is hopelessly overstretched: flying under-marketed flights to Osaka, Paris, London and Dubai while neglecting regional routes..Besides opening up the domestic and international airways to competition, the quick answer in every tour operator´s lip regarding seat capacity is to privatise the national carrier. "But seriously, Royal Nepal Airlines must be privatised. That is the only way the airline can be turned around," says Prabhakar Rana, of Nepal´s prestigious Soaltee Group, which has deliberately stayed out of the airline business..There has been discussion of privatising PIA by the Islamabad authorities, but there the matter has stopped. Rather than privatise, the Nepali Government has tried to get Royal Nepal into a partnership with a reputed international carrier, but because of the severely eroded image of Royal Nepal, there have been no takers. As for Biman, no government is willing to even utter the p-word for the wrath it would incur from the airline´s workers´ union..Air Lanka is the only airline that is being seriously considered for some amount of equity participation from the outside. The deal on offer is a 40 percent slice of the airline´s equity plus the right to manage the company, and according to trade sources in Colombo, a Malaysian party "with no experience but plenty of money" is interested. The Sri Lankan government and its agencies will hold a controlling 51 percent so that the airline will continue to be the national carrier and benefit from Colombo´s air traffic arrangements with other governments. Nine percent will be reserved for the airline´s 4,585 staff—a sweetener devised by the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa to overcome employee resistance to privatisation which he preferred to call "peoplisation"..Not everyone is sure that privatisation will help, however, and there are government-owned operators that run efficiently, such as Singapore Airlines. As far as Air India and Indian Airlines are concerned, senior officials in both airlines maintain that they have what it takes to run super carriers, if they could function without political interference. Says R.N. Pathak, the Deputy General Manager of Indian Airlines, "I don´t think Indian Airlines will be privatised. It will not help fulfil the airline´s social and other obligatory roles. Besides, why should we be privatised if we have autonomy?".But there are the private airline operators who refuse to countenance the need for flag carriers. Says Anoop Rana of the new private Nepali airline, Necon Air: "The concept of national airline is archaic. If there are national airlines, what does that make us in the private sector: anti-national?".There are places where the government´s washing its hands of airlines has worked to the public´s benefit. For example, when the American airlines were deregulated in the mid-1980s, it set in motion a chain of events that brought down dinosaurs like PanAm and TWA. Fares declined by 15 percent and passengers benefited from increased frequency and safer travel. Meanwhile, South Asians pay the highest rates for air travel in comparison to the other world regions..However, most observers do not see privatisation of the major South Asian airways anytime soon—the interest of national carriers is too zealously guarded by governments. Besides, says a senior Royal Nepal manager, "Privatisation has to go hand-in-hand with the government´s ability to monitor and regulate, to ensure that issues of social equity, air safety and national interest are not ignored. Everyone knows that the Nepali government, at least, has no ability to protect the public from business´s rapacious instincts.".The Southern South Asians.While other South Asian airlines dither, Air Lanka and Air Maldives are forging ahead to cash in on stable tourism and upscale ethnic traffic. Sixteen years after it succeeded Air Ceylon, Air Lanka is now a national airline that is on the threshold of privatisation and the only South Asian airline that can be proud of its equipment and service..In a region where decisions on new equipment can take years because of competing political interests, Air Lanka showed forward planning by being the first Asian airline to fly the long-range Airbus A340 last year. It now has three A340s on finance leases and two A320s for its regional routes..Air Lanka made its highestever profit of SLR 432 million in 1994-95—up 129 percent from a year earlier. The group´s net profit was even better at SLR 476 million. But these profits have only reduced and not erased accumulated past losses standing at SLR 1.5 billion..Even tiny Maldives is now trying to enter the big league, linking up with a Malaysian operator to lease an Airbus A310. South Asia´s newest airline is linking Male with Colombo, Kuala Lumpur, and Dubai. Servicing Colombo has, for the first time, given the Maldivians a slice of airfare revenue out of their lucrative tourism industry. This has naturally hurt Air Lanka, which had a near- monopoly on the Colombo-Male traffic..Helpless PIA.Aside from the ´south South Asians´, the outlook for the region´s national airlines looks bleak indeed. And nowhere is the malaise of South Asian aviation more apparent than in Pakistan International and Air India. Once the region´s flagship carriers, both are buffeted by severe management turbulence, crippled by government interference, undercut by competition, and weighed down by an ageing fleet..The downturn in both airlines began at about the same time, in the early 1980s. In the case of PIA, airline insiders point to the blunder of selling off McDonnell Douglas DC-10s and buying second-hand Boeing 747-200s as when the slide began. An airline that was once the standard-setter in management, inflight service, technical facilities and equipment, PIA today is in a nosedive, with news reports pointing to deterioration in virtually every department. The main cause seems to be politicised recruitment. Helpless airline officials say over the last few years they have had to add 700 personnel to an already bloated and overstaffed organisation. Last year, the Employees Council of PIA appealed to the Prime Minister through an advertisement in the newspapers to stop the interference.."We just do not have market-oriented people at the helm," confided one airline staffer in Lahore. "Discipline is not enough. Overstaff-ing with incompetent people and the ´officer mentality´ has ruined PIA..Today, we look back with nostalgia to those days when one was proud to be a PIA employee.".The airline also reported to the federal Anti-Corruption Committee about the 10,000 free or discounted tickets worth PKR 1 billion that were handed out to ministers, officials and families, generals, judges, ambassadors, journalists, religious leaders and sportsmen. The report cited one official, a joint secretary at the Ministry of Defence, as taking 17 discounted flights to London, Paris, Singapore and New York for his family..PIA does expect to make a profit of PKR 752 million in fiscal 1995-1996 on a projected revenue of PKR 31.3 billion, but this would obviously be more if, for instance, the government paid back the estimated PKR 461 million it owes the airline for VVIP travel..Says a PIA commander, who wished to remain anonymous, like most airline personnel interviewed for this article, "The airline is merely being maintained to be milked by the politically powerful. Although martial law has ended in Pakistan, the airline is still under military rule." In fact, it is true that for all practical purposes, the airline comes under the Ministry of Defence. Its Managing Director is appointed by the government with the consent of the Ministry of Defence and Air Force higher-ups. The Chairman of the Board is ex-officio the Secretary of Defence. That every PIA flight has fully armed guards for security—five in the case of a Boeing 747 flight— seems only to underline this point..Maharaja on Hold.If it is the Ministry of Defence that has tied PIA down, it is the Ministry of Civil Aviation that has kept Air India on a never-ending holding pattern. Even its current charismatic and work-oriented chairman, Russi Mody, has not been able to keep officials out of his hair. And all the while, Air India is approaching stall speed: strikes often cripple operations, stranding thousands of cursing passengers forced to camp out at airports around the world..In 1981, Air India had a 33 percent market share of traffic in and out of India. This had fallen to 20 percent by 1994. During the same period, the airline gave up more than 20 destinations. Its inability to expand or at the very least maintain international destinations has brought criticism that Air India is holding the India´s tourism to ransom. But the airline seems smug about its high load factors-pleased that the Airbus A310s it operates to Hong Kong or Johannesburg are full, although the routes could easily take Boeing 747s with twice the capacity..All this has prompted a derisive media to call Air India "the country´s most profitable under-achiever". Indian Airlines (1A) stepped in when Air India could not handle regional routes, but together they only operate 41.6 percent of the "bilateral entitlements", providing a gap that the private airlines would be only too happy to fill..Overstaffing and staff disgruntle-ment is the bane of both Air India and Indian Airlines. Says one disenchanted airline manager, "We have 54 aircraft and 30,000 employees. That is an aircraft-employee ratio of 1:500, which just is not realistic.".It is interesting to compare, say, Air Lanka´s optimism, as evident in its finely-produced annual report, with Indian Airlines´ despondency, reflected in its own report containing a listing of why the last six years saw the airline lose a total of 1NR 9.2 billion: the grounding of the Airbus A320s in 1990-1992, foreign exchange fluctuations, delay in increase in fares, industrial unrest, operations in non-profit sectors like the Indian Northeast, emergence of private airlines and the "exodus of pilots and engineers". Since 1991, every year, Indian Airlines has reported losses averaging INR 2 billion, although, looking at the charts, a turnaround seems to have begun..One of the world´s largest domestic airlines, Indian Airlines saw a devastating crisis with the grounding of its entire new A320 fleet after a fatal crash in Bangalore in 1992. Indian Airlines officials have also had to deal with a crippling haemorrhage of crew to better-paying jobs with new private airlines; altogether 161 pilots left the airline in the last five years. During that period, the airline´s market share dropped from 100 percent to 63.5 percent..A survey last year by an Indian newspaper said 63 percent of Indians felt that Indian Airlines was unsafe, although a market study done by the group IMRB did say that IA was considered the safest airline in India. On the other hand, a report in 1993 by the International Airline Passengers Association ranked India, China, Colombia and South Korea as the least safe for passengers. Indian Airlines had eight Boeing 737 crashes in the last twenty years, four of them fatal. Southwest, an American airline with many more of the same aircraft had only one non-fatal crash during the same period..One private airline marketing manager had this to say about India´s two national carriers: "Nothing that is government-owned, despite the tremendous infrastructure, will be able to keep up with the dynamic market. AI and IA can only react, they can never be proactive. The infatuation with socialism and nationalism just will not do in this market known as aviation.".Ethnic Traffic.The main source of PIA´s and Air India´s income is Pakistanis and Indians travelling to the Gulf and to Europe and North America. While this ethnic traffic keeps the two airlines full, the flag carriers have lost heavily when they stopped catering, as in the past, to high-paying international clientele. "The moment we decided to become cattle carts to the Gulf is when we started to lose our spirit," says the former Air India commander now flying in the Gulf..Bangla Biman is another airline that has profited heavily from ethnic traffic—ferrying its nationals to and from Europe and the Gulf. The airline has also been the most aggressive South Asian airline to cash in on the Europe-Asia traffic out of its Dhaka hub. Offering rock-bottom fares, Biman is the airline of choice for budget travellers flying, for instance, to and from Amsterdam and Hong Kong, or New York and Kathmandu, via Dhaka..Biman´s growth was initially phenomenal, starting services after independence in 1971 with a lone Dakota donated by India. The mainstay of Biman has been four DC-10s, and it is already late to replace them with newer, more fuel-efficient planes. However, Biman, too, is under the thumb of the government and hence too sluggish in an airline market that requires fast reaction. Biman has a ten-member Board, seven of whom are secretary-level bureaucrats. Although the airline does plan to add two second-hand Airbus A310s later this year, this is not good enough, says one Biman official. "Unless ministerial control is relaxed and Biman is allowed to operate independently, dramatic improvements cannot be expected.".The Cooky Jar.Smart airlines try to maintain their fleets young, because new planes have better engines, fly higher and are more fuel efficient. Other than Air Lanka, all South Asian airlines have fleets whose average fleet age is two decades. If PIA and Air India aircraft were human, they would be octogenarians by now..Air India has added four Boeing 747-400s since 1993, but it still has an average fleet age of 17 years— compared to Singapore Airlines´ 5.5. Air India is in the market for medium-capacity long-range aircraft and wants to keep up with expected inbound traffic (to India) of five million by the year 2000. Brijesh Kumar, the new Managing Director of Air India says he wants to "emerge with a young, modem and economically efficient fleet". But this requires an investment of USD 5.7 billion. Meanwhile, the airline complains openly through its press releases that aircraft purchases take a long time because of bureaucratic drag..However much it is brushed under the carpet, kickbacks are a major factor affecting South Asian fleet modernisation, and "power centres" turn themselves into brokers, often competing and sabotaging each other. PIA needs desperately to upgrade, and there is a deal in the making with Singapore Airlines for two (again, secondhand) Boeing 747 Bigtops, but with political hands in the cooky jar, the decision is being delayed..The history of airline purchases of Royal Nepal, too, has been one of choosing wrong aircraft or paying high prices, all due to corruption in high places. With the advent of democracy, the circle of those expecting kickbacks has actually enlarged, which has had the result of delaying decisions even further. Observers question the high prices paid for Royal Nepal´s two Boeing 757s—narrow-body, short-haul aircraft that are being asked to fly the Europe and Japan sectors. The airline desperately needs a couple of widebodies of its own, but the one A310 it hired on "wet-lease" turned out to be so expensive that it has swallowed all profits for the last two years..Serves You Right.Many in the travel trade who have given up in despair of things ever improving say South Asians get the airlines they deserve. Why blame the airlines when greedy government officials create a scene, for example, when they are not upgraded to first class, or worse, take a leak on the aisle, as one minister recently did on a Calcutta-Delhi flight. South Asian kings and prime ministers have been known to "hijack" the most modern aircraft of their national airline when they go for NAM Summits or lengthy foreign tours, causing havoc to airline schedules..Why blame the airline when toilets become unserviceable one hour into flights to and from the Subcontinent? (Some overseas operators post signs in Hindi reminding passengers of basic hygiene techniques and one even carries "sweepers" in its South Asian sector.) Why blame the airline when passengers harass flight attendants and treat them like servants, or when they throw violent tantrums when they are refused a beer for breakfast? Why blame the airline when the rate of loss of life jackets due to pilferage by passengers in South Asian airlines is the highest in the world?.Flight attendants and crew of East Asian and Gulf-based airlines say their least favourite destinations are Delhi, Calcutta, Dhaka and Karach-for the boorish, overbearing passengers they have to serve with a smile..Still, airlines cannot pass all the buck to their passengers, to their governments, to the competition, to the world. Air India´s expensive fiasco with the livery change of its motif on the tail which was abandoned after part of the fleet had been repainted is a case in point. The airline is now back to its old colours, and the Maharaja is back on board, but seems to have lost his zest..Half-hearted change of colours have also taken place with PIA and Biman. Royal Nepal is stuck with a tacky signature and a generic tail stripe which it allegedly cannot change because King Birendra approved it. It has not been able to take advantage of Nepal´s image as a travel destination, or of the snarling Akash Bhairav logo it has—because some German consultants told the airline a few years ago that passengers would be "scared"..Shoddy and tasteless advertisement campaigns simply draw passenger attention to the carriers´ general sloppiness. The average quality of the advertisement copy of the major South Asian airlines have actually slipped over the last decade, together with the age of their fleets, the quality of their service, and the dip in their balance sheets..The sooner South Asian governments realise that their airlines are really "flag-carriers", the sooner they are convinced that better and freer air travel is the path to prosperity—the sooner South Asia itself will take off..Traffic Jam over Calcutta.On any clear night, look up at the skies above Calcutta or Delhi and you see an endless procession of blinking lights heading from east to west. Just before dawn, the flow is reversed—the lights move west to east..These are intercontinental passenger flights to and from Europe, East Asia and Australia, traversing South Asian airspace. As the economies of Pacific Asia grow, aircraft movement from Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore to Europe is expanding between 10 and 20 percent a year. Nearly 90 percent of these Asia-Europe flights are funnelled into narrow air corridors overflying Burma, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, where poor navigational and radar tracking limit the number of aircraft that can proceed safely..Every night, an average of 75 Europe-bound flights converge over North India. The same number of planes return in the early hours. The task of separating the aircraft falls on air traffic controllers like those at Calcutta´s Flight Information Region (FIR) at Dum Dum. Huddled over the ghostly green light of radar consoles, the controllers keep track of aircraft movements. When the planes fly out of range, they have to work with position reports relayed by pilots over unreliable shortwave frequencies..Because of limited radar coverage, the planes need to be separated by at least 15 minutes´ flying time and 2,000 ft vertical separation. However, there are limitations on the number of long-range airliners that can be "stacked" because as they come over the Subcontinent they have full tanks and hence are too heavy to fly above 29,000 feet..Today, the corridors over South Asia have reached saturation capacity with worrisome implications for air safety, say experts. It does not help that most west-bound traffic arrives at the North Indian air traffic bottleneck at the same time: in the couple of hours before and after midnight. As air traffic builds up, Europe-bound aircraft have been forced into fuel-guzzling holding patterns over India to wait for slots to continue their journey..Then there was the incident in December 1995 when a Ukrainian registered cargo An-26 flying to Calcutta deviated 25 km off course, and, unnoticed, dipped down to parachute a large cache of arms and ammunition near a village in West Bengal. The incident put into sharp focus what airline pilots had long been grumbling about—the lack of radar surveillance over Indian airspace and the consequent safety concerns.."The North Indian-Pakistan air corridors are not overcrowded, they just need to be more efficiently managed," says Lalit Bickram Shah, Asia-Pacific representative of the UN´s International Civil Aviation Organisation (1CAO) in Bangkok. He says that, elsewhere, ICAO is presently involved in upgrading present "line-of-sight" air navigation to a satellite-based communications system, which would be able to squeeze three times the number of aircraft into an airspace without compromising safety..Something like that would be ideal for South Asian airspace. The other solution would be to open up alternative air paths over Central Asia to lessen congestion over South Asia. Air traffic control services can be a good source of income for countries that are in flight paths For example, Burma earns more than USD 17 million a year in fees from all the Europe-to-Asia traffic that overflies it. Countries like Nepal can profit from the opening up of trans-Himalayan routes ideal for Delhi-Hong Kong or Dubai-Tokyo flights..Stop Press: Just as it was going to press, on 1 April, Himal has learnt from the International Air Transport Association (iata) that the Indian Government is going in for a high-tech satellite-based system known as future air navigation system (FANS), to go into operation later this year and starting with the Calcutta FIR. FANS, it is said, will allow air traffic management without use of radar, and will increase the efficiency of controllers in handling the night-time air traffic over South Asia..Small Island, Big Airline.Two words hang on the lips of Air India or P1A pilots when you ask them to name their favourite competition: "Singapore Airlines". The upstart airline from the tiny city-state on the tip of the Malay peninsula has grown to be a player of international stature, rising in size and clout and spreading wings all over the world from its ASEAN hub..Take a look at the statistics: Singapore Airlines has 69 aircraft, among them 29 Boeing 747-400s and 23 Airbus 310s. While South Asian airlines continue to fly senile fleets that are averaging 20 years, SIA´s average fleet age is just 5.5 years, and getting younger. Last year, the airline made a staggering order for 77 Boeing 777s, at a cost of Singapore $1.77 billion. A little bit of Chinese numerology working there, but a bit of superstition is pardonable when you are making the largest order ever in history..With a staff of 12,862, the airline carried 5.4 million passengers in April-September 1995 and made total revenue of US$ 2.4 billion, and profit after tax of US$ 350 million. Everything SIA does is dictated by market principles, although it is, truth be told, 54 percent owned by the government. It is always in the cutting edge of airline innovations, and hires the best international crew for its airplanes—except the flight attendants who have to be "Singapore Girls". In fact, the wholesome sexual suggestion of the "Singapore Girl" has done much to improve the airline´s mileage..The person who led SIA since its modest beginnings in 1972 is, incidentally, a Singaporean of South Asian ancestry. It is J.Y. Pillay, who retired on 1 March, to hand over to another person of similar ancestry, S. Dhanabalan..Singapore Airlines is not a South Asian airline, but it is the airline with the most extensive South Asian connections, flying from Singapore to all saarc countries except Bhutan, and serving five points in India alone. Besides, it enjoys "fifth freedom" rights within South Asia, carrying passengers between Dhaka and Kathmandu..With a young fleet, motivated staff, worldwide reach, and outstanding profits, SIA is everything South Asian airlines are not.