Government is understood to have asked Air India to prepare a 8 to 10-year-plan of resource generation to revamp itself by implementing the turnaround and financial restructuring programme to the hilt.

With a Group of Ministers (GoM) last week setting the ball rolling for effecting the turnaround, Air India expects another tranche of Rs 1,200 crore as equity in July and plans to operationalise two subsidiaries on MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) and ground-handling as soon as it gets the official nod, sources said.

It is also seeking total infusion of Rs 5,000 crore during this financial year itself, they said. The government has already infused Rs 2,000 crore in two tranches of equity, raising the airline’s equity base to Rs 2,145 crore.

A plan would be prepared for the next decade or so as to how much equity infusion would be required by the airline to make it self-sustaining and how it would generate resources to emerge as a strong airline of the region, the sources said.

The airline Board, which met here yesterday, took stock of the progress made in effecting the turnaround as was recommended by the GoM at its meeting a week ago.

A Cabinet note on operationalising Air India’s proposed subsidiaries for ground handling and MRO has been finalised and forwarded to the Cabinet Secretary for circulation so that the issue of equity infusion can be taken up by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in the next few weeks, the sources said.

Once the two subsidiaries are operationalised, the airline would be able to transfer almost 19,000 of its 40,000 employees to them, they said.

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