Unlimited free tickets for Air India CMD's family

EW DELHI: It's usually lonely at the top but not for the chief executive -- and his predecessors -- of the now critically ill Air India-Indian

Airlines combine. As the airline fights for survival, an RTI application filed by activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal has revealed how over the years the definition of family has been expanded generously -- and it's now a big Hindu undivided family -- for the purpose of getting free tickets.

While employees make do with two free tickets a year, CMDs get an unlimited number of tickets for their families even in this time of avowed austerity.

The airline, which is now trying to cut costs, says the freebies would soon be plugged. "There's a proposal to prune this policy drastically. How can children, grandchildren, daughters-in-law and sons-in-law be allowed to fly at the cost of the exchequer when we are asking for money from government to keep the airline afloat?" said a top government official.

What was essentially to be a policy of free journeys for the CMD and his or her spouse, has over the years come to include whoever the chief wants to be considered as his family for the purpose.

Ironically in 1995 -- when private airlines had started threatening its monoply -- IA decided to free air travel "on an 'as required' basis to CMD and their families while they are in service". This basically meant unlimited free flights. Then, even as it kept losing market share to new players, IA decided two years later to expand the definition of family.

The memorandum of an Indian Airlines meeting in January 1997 says that the definition of family for an employee includes -- "spouse, children, parents, brothers, sisters, dependent relatives and dependent in the household."

Since the last terms led to confusion, the memo sought to replace this definition with "spouse, children, parents, brothers, sisters, son-in-law/daughter-in-law" ostensibly to include the last two categories. AI on the other hand is magnanimous enough to allow CMD's discretion in including any relative of an employee as eligible for free travel on "compassionate grounds."

The reply also contains a copy of a letter written by the ministry of civil aviation last January to the Central Vigilance Commission which admits that "the definition of family in case of 'as required basis', perhaps, needs to be pruned." This admission came following reports how an incumbent IA CMD had taken 161 free passages for self and family. Interestingly, in his reply to the government on this issue, the CMD listed how this had been a common practice with previous CMDs as well! He cited three predecessors who had taken between 173 and 15 tickets for their family's use in their tenures.

Times of India