Air India assures travel agents it isn't shutting down

Air India has written to its travel agents assuring them the airline won’t be shut down, a day after its chairman posted a tweet of similar assurance.

The reactions follow a visit by aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri to the national carrier’s employee unions wherein he made a case for urgent privatisation as the only way forward as fears of a shutdown loom large.

“...these rumours and baseless and without an iota of truth,” Meenakshi Mallik, director commercial at the state-run carrier wrote in the letter to agents.


“Air India’s financial and operational condition is being without compromising on our service levels,” she said adding the agents’ business with the airline was secure.

A day earlier the airline’s chairman Ashwani Lohani had rubbished rumours of a shutdown calling them “baseless”.

The government is on its second attempt to privatise the airline.