National carrier Air India is in the process of closing down its offices in Cairo and Tehran while it has already shut down booking offices in Zurich, Chittagong and Vienna. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma told the Rajya Sabha that a committee at Air India is in the process of taking action to close down offices in Cairo and Tehran.
Regional Manager (Gulf, Middle East & Africa) -- and Regional Finance Manager, are part of the panel.
"Air India generated Rs 58.56 lakh from Cairo office and Rs 138.75 lakh from Tehran office as revenues during 2013-14," Sharma said in a written reply.
Besides, a committee is looking to address issues of downsizing the carrier's Toronto station and the process is in the final stages, he noted.
The national carrier generated more than Rs 6,711 lakh revenues from the Toronto office during 2013-14 period. Last November, Air India had shuttered its booking offices in Chittagong and Vienna while the office in Zurich was closed down in October 2014. In 2013-14, it had offices at nine foreign locations where it has no flights.
They were Washington, Los Angeles, Toronto, Amsterdam, Cairo, Tehran, Zurich, Vienna and Chittagong. The carrier would retain its offices in Washington, Los Angeles and Amsterdam.
In a separate written reply, Sharma said Air India has been incurring losses in the past few years due to various reasons including high operating cost environment, enhanced bilateral entitlements to Gulf and European carriers that have resulted in lower yields and depreciation of Indian rupee.
Entry of low cost carriers on domestic and competition form foreign carriers in the international market also resulted in lower yields for Air India, the Minister said.
To a query on whether there have been instances of Air India's Dreamliner flights making emergency landing, Sharma said two such cases have been reported. Both such landings were account of precautionary measures taken in 2013, Sharma said.
In one case, it was malfunctioning of 'Electric Brake Actuator Controller' (EBAC) and in another it was of 'Remote Data Concentrator' (RDC). The message of 'BRAKES' had appeared due to malfunction of EBAC in the first case.
Sharma said the removed EBAC was tested at the manufacturer's facility centre and passed all the tests. "Hence, no definite cause could be established for the reported messages of 'BRAKES'," he added.
"In the second case, the removed RDC was found satisfactory at manufacturer's facility centre and hence it is concluded that the fault had occured due to software problem and the same got rectified after re-loading of the software," Sharma said.
