Singapore Airlines is in it for the money and the sixth freedom rights it could leverage. I don't consider Singapore / SQ being either an angel or a victim in this Air India situation. They meant business.

SQ lobbied the Singapore government to permit Vistara's merger with Air India. It made business sense to them. They counted their pennies when they could full well say no and walk out of the investment. But they walked in seeking 25.1 share in the entire Air India Group that covers Air India express as well.

Forget outsiders. Most insiders themselves don't know how TATA group works. They are another parallel government in itself. So much sarkar, that TATA group has its own TATA Administrative Services (Sounds familiar?)

Now these TAS employees are a privileged club/caste within the TATA Group - who have their 'style' of functioning. They keep pushing their TAS candidates into Air India for the perks. But once they infiltrate the company, they are a nuisance is one way to reckon a mild description. Their technical awareness is mild but they skip the general order of things, thinking they know the best. The TAS crowd always interfere with criticial business processes despite very limited technical leverage while they feel they are immune from accountability. (Sounds familiar?)

Protocols, processes, due care is a natural order of things in aviation. You take shortcuts today, you can expect the payback in say 6 months to eternity. What Air India is experiencing now is the outcome of shortcuts taken few years ago. You cannot let social media and digital marekting teams define your product. Aviation at its core is an engineering profession - not a marketing one. But inside Air India, the MBA shampoo sellers and South Delhi papa ki pari HR execs thought the idea that real engineering knowhow makes the real aviation product was a funny belief. Brand came first, product and engineering came second.

When Vistara was functional, there were strict boundaries between technical areas and managerial areas. The technical areas were a strong domain of Singapore Airlines - and their nominee CXO's had the final say on technical aspects. These TAS members were NOT entertained. What Vistara guaranteed was a viable product, but wrapped in understated premium cover.

Enter the TATA bid for Air India, the period between 2022 and 2024 - the company was a mess, rife with reckless hiring of people with no domain experience in key areas. 23 year old consultants were making slide decks to make presentations to key decision makers who themselves had no aviation experience. The actual engineers, technicians, safety professionals, with decades of experience were sidelined. Many of them were brutally and unceremoniously fired. This happened in Vistara too. Singapore Airlines never batted an eyelid when the entire mess was happening.

There is no point blaming anybody because Singapore Airlines was fully aware of what was going on. Never bothered to put their foot down. Because they full well know that this sunk cost still had the potential to yield their dividends.