Will it be second-time lucky for Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines (SIA)? Many see a tie-up between them as a match made in heaven.
It started that way too. They first wooed each other during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government’s rule in 2000. Tata Sons was anyway a name long associated with aviation. JRD Tata’s Tata Airlines was the country’s first national carrier, which was renamed Air India Ltd in 1946. Two years later, JRD founded Air India International Ltd as a joint venture with the Government for long-range international operations and was its Executive Chairman until it was nationalised in 1953. He continued as its Chairman until February 1978. Singapore Airlines, of course, has blazed global standards in passenger comfort, service reliability and worldwide connectivity.
In 2000, Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines tied up to bid for Air India, which was up for disinvestment. An SIA delegation was parked for months at Delhi’s Maurya hotel, doing due diligence for the merger and examining Air India’s books. It was a different time and place, a world far removed from the post-9/11 paranoia of security checks. A member of the SIA delegation recalled being within “spitting distance” of the then US President, Bill Clinton, who was staying at the same hotel during his India visit.
When Ratan Tata, nephew of JRD Tata and Chairman of Tata Sons, said at a press conference in Delhi that he wanted to recreate the magic of Air India and restore it to its pristine glory, many saw it as a fitting finale to a journey that JRD had started with the airline’s iconic maharaja.
But that was not to be. The disinvestment did not happen and the Tatas moved away not only from their partner Singapore Airlines but from aviation itself.
06/12/14 Ashwini Phadnis/Business Line
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It started that way too. They first wooed each other during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government’s rule in 2000. Tata Sons was anyway a name long associated with aviation. JRD Tata’s Tata Airlines was the country’s first national carrier, which was renamed Air India Ltd in 1946. Two years later, JRD founded Air India International Ltd as a joint venture with the Government for long-range international operations and was its Executive Chairman until it was nationalised in 1953. He continued as its Chairman until February 1978. Singapore Airlines, of course, has blazed global standards in passenger comfort, service reliability and worldwide connectivity.
In 2000, Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines tied up to bid for Air India, which was up for disinvestment. An SIA delegation was parked for months at Delhi’s Maurya hotel, doing due diligence for the merger and examining Air India’s books. It was a different time and place, a world far removed from the post-9/11 paranoia of security checks. A member of the SIA delegation recalled being within “spitting distance” of the then US President, Bill Clinton, who was staying at the same hotel during his India visit.
When Ratan Tata, nephew of JRD Tata and Chairman of Tata Sons, said at a press conference in Delhi that he wanted to recreate the magic of Air India and restore it to its pristine glory, many saw it as a fitting finale to a journey that JRD had started with the airline’s iconic maharaja.
But that was not to be. The disinvestment did not happen and the Tatas moved away not only from their partner Singapore Airlines but from aviation itself.
06/12/14 Ashwini Phadnis/Business Line
