Newstrack

Air India lines up ESOP plan for staff

EAW Staff - Mumbai

Air India (AI), the mega airline resulting from the Air-India and Indian merger, will offer employee stock options (ESOPs) to all its 33,000 staff within a few months as it gets ready for an initial public offer (IPO) a year down the line, civil aviation minister Praful Patel said here recently. "It would take six months to a year to synergise (Air India's operations with that of Indian) and meanwhile we are proposing stock options to all the 33,000 employees," Patel said.

With the formalities of the merger completed in the last week of August, the airline is now thinking of acquiring more aircraft over and above its earlier plan of acquiring 200 aircraft by 2011-12. "They are looking at more and will be decided in few months," Patel said. It has already placed orders for 111 aircraft, which will be delivered at a cost of almost US$ 10 billion. The government plans to sell 10-20 per cent stake in the airline and the IPO will help fund the fleet expansion.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of the national management convention organised recently by the All India Management Association, Patel said: "The vision is to see that India has at least 1000-plus aircraft in the next five years and about 1,500 aircraft by 2020 for commercial operations, together with 2-3 million jobs directly in the aviation sector by 2020... We need to have at least 50 per cent of all inbound and outbound International traffic for Indian carriers." At present, the share of A-I is 30 per cent or even less on long-haul routes.