Centre owes Rs 822 Cr to Air India: RTI

Cash-strapped Air India, which is being disinvested by the government, has to recover over Rs 822 crore for providing VVIP charter flights. This information was provided by the national carrier to an RTI response.

In its RTI response provided to Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd), who sought to know the latest data on outstanding bills of Air India..... the carrier said as on November 30, 2019, Rs 822 crore were pending towards VVIP charter flights.

It also said an additional Rs 9.67 crore towards evacuation operations was also pending.

The RTI also informed that Centre also owes  Rs 12.65 crore towards ferrying foreign dignitaries.

Under VVIP charter flights, Air India provides its aircraft to ferry-- the President, the Vice-President...

...and the Prime Minister for which the bills are paid by the ministries.

If outstanding bills of VVIP charter flights were not enough, the carrier had also accrued bills of Rs 526.14 crore....

.... towards government offices which also include tickets taken on credit by the officials as on March 31, 2019, according to the reply.

Out of Rs 526.14 crore, Rs 236.16 crore were pending for over three years, Air India said in its response.

The airlines also said provisioned Rs 281.82 crore as an accounting charge in its account books for "probable non-recovery".

Air India had stopped the practice of issuing tickets on credit to government agencies for the travel of their officials in December last year because of accruing pending bills.

In the RTI response, the airlines has provided a list of agencies against which bills were pending.

These include the CBI, the Enforcement Directorate, Income Tax, Intelligence Bureau, CRPF, Department of Posts, Reserve Bank of India among others.

The ministry said reasons for losses reported by Air India were --high interest burden, increase in competition especially from low cost carriers...

... adverse impact of exchange rate variation due to weakening of the Indian Rupee, and high operating costs.