Air India sold to Tata,Scindia extends best wishes to new management

“Welcome back, Air India,” Ratan Tata, JRD Tata's successor and chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, said in a tweet. “While admittedly it will take considerable effort to rebuild Air India, it will hopefully provide a very strong market opportunity to the Tata Group's presence in the aviation industry.”

Tata Sons Pvt. was selected as the winning bidder for India's flag carrier, ending decades of attempts to privatize a money-losing and debt-laden airline, and potentially ending years of taxpayer-bailouts that's kept the company alive. Tata Sons, which originally launched Air India Ltd. with a namesake branding in 1932, bid Rs 18,000 crore ($2.4 billion) as an enterprise value for Air India, Tuhin Kanta Pandey,Secreatry, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, said at a briefing on Friday. The government aims to complete the transaction by the end of 2021. The Tata Group will retain Rs 15,300 crore of Air India's debt and pay Rs 2,700 crore cash to the government, Pandey said.

The cash-strapped carrier had total debt of Rs 61,560 crore as of August 31, and the debt not absorbed by Tata Sons will be taken over by the government. The deal doesn't include Air India's non-core assets like land and buildings, and Tata Sons will have to retain all of the airline's employees for at least a year.Civil Aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, in his tweet , has extended best wishes to new management and hope the airline will continue to deliver on its mission of bringing people closer through its successful operations.

Air India’s return to @TataCompanies marks a new dawn for the airline! My best wishes to the new management, and congratulations to @SecyDIPAM & @MoCA_GoI for successfully concluding the difficult task of paving a new runway for the airline to take off!
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— Jyotiraditya M. Scindia (@JM_Scindia) October 8, 2021

Air India has a fleet of 117 wide-body and narrow body aircraft and Air India Express Ltd. has 24 narrow body aircraft, Tata Group said in a statement.