Air India will be divested, and at the same time the interest of its employees will be looked after, Union Minister for Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri said on Monday.

“Do not ever be under the impression that this time around there will be any problems (in the sale of Air India). There will not be. The interest I am seeing in the acquisition and from the quarters I am seeing it (from).... I am reassured. The requirement of the staff and the important people who run it will be foremost,” he said.

Puri was speaking at a function to handover a letter of appreciation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the crew of the airline which operated two relief flights to Wuhan, China, to get back over 600 Indian and Maldivian citizens.

He said that the staff will be required by the new entity managing or owing Air India, as a there has no recruitment for how many years and hence there was no surplus staff.

He seemed to indicate that the government is yet to negotiate a lock-in period for how long the new owner will have to keep the existing staff of the State-owned airline.

“We not only want to keep Air India flying as a brand. But we want to ensure that that continued operation does not have the uncertainty of the past many years,” he said.

“It is not the planes. The planes are important, they have to be in good shape. But the people who run the airlines are engineering staff, the people who command the plane, the cabin crew collectively,” he said.

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