Can AI be trusted when it can't keep its realty papers safe?

State-owned Air India had big plans this year. Apart from finally turning profitable, it was hoping to raise money by leasing or selling some of the 105 properties it owned across various Indian cities as well as Tokyo and London.

However, the airline’s asset monetisation plans may have to be placed on the back-burner as the airline seems to have misplaced registration papers for at least 20 percent of its properties that were to be put on the block, a ccording to an Economic Times report.

[caption id=“attachment_582096” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Looks like the national carrier’s fortunes are still a few years away[/caption]

“About 10 properties, including the terminal office in Delhi’s Baba Kharak Singh Marg,” have been put on fast track for a sale or lease. “But it has been unable to begin the process as papers for many properties, including the 1.7 lakh square feet office in Baba Kharak Singh Marg in Delhi, are missing,” the ET report said.

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The national carrier, which has accumulated losses of about Rs 20,000 crore,was hoping to raise at least Rs 5,000 crore by selling and leasing its prime properties and has even appointed global property consultant DTZ as the transaction advisor for the process. But here’s a little reality check for the loss-making airline: Nobody is going to buy property with incomplete papers even if it is worth crores.

Whether the missing papers are a result of callousness or the result of the political-bureaucracy nexus to purposely shield real estate transactions is not known. But one thing is certain: How could the government buy prime property in the nation’s capital without getting its registration done? And even if it did, losing ownership papers is equivalent to losing the property altogether!

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Secondly, the proposal to put under-utilised real estate assets was proposed in 2011. Yet the airline never had a real estate management department to even look into its assets, let alone evaluation of its properties.

Looks like the national carrier’s fortunes are still a few years away even if Air India is on its way to profitability at the operational level this fiscal ( Read more here ). Already the airline’s plan to lease out office space in its Mumbai headquarters at Nariman Point received a tepid response with few takers, according to this report.

While Aviation Minister Ajit Singh blamed the poor response to tough market conditions,real estate consultants and property experts remained skeptical about Air India’s leasing plans, since Nariman Point is no longer the preferred choice for office addresses for most companies.

It remains to be seen if the airline’s other asset leveraging plans will go down the same way given the unusual problems that have started cropping up even before the airline manages to get any cash infusion. Singh has outlined a major belt tightening exercise for the airline which includes cutting costs incurred on overseas offices, salaries, fuel and office expenses. Also, as _Firstpost_ noted earlier, “he has asked for an assessment of the necessity of deputing staff abroad for assisting Air India/embassies for ticketing, etc, since nowadays these facilities are available online.”

When Air India went into a tailspin in 2011, the question was: is this anyway to run an airline? Now that it is on the road to some kind of revival, we need to ask: is it worth keeping it going when it can’t even manage to keep its property papers safe?