I have been rather remiss in adding Posts to my Blog, part of which is due to another major change which will be coming in our lives, which I will describe later in this Post.
In the meanwhile, the Indian Prime Minister, wearing his other hat as the Honorary Chairman and MD of Air-India, has again announced the introduction of another new flight, this time between Colombo and Varanasi, which happens to be his constituency. I was happy to see, however, that the actual CMD has also announced that AI will operate services to Los Angeles, Nairobi and Stockholm.
What makes me happier is that with greater utilization of capacity, the airline reduces its break-even load factor; a point that I made to Mr. Rohit Nandan which he seems to have ignored. I also wrote to his predecessor, Mr. Arvind Jadhav in July 2009 on this issue and I quote an extract from my email “In my time as Head of the Planning Division, we had as a rule of thumb, an optimum economic utilization of around 4,000 hours for each aircraft. I presume this figure has not changed by any appreciable extent”.
Despite this "reminder", AI continued to layover aircraft at JFK and EWR for up to 14 hours.
I also see that the current CMD has told all concerned not to treat the staff as VIPs and that the latter’s hand baggage must be carried by the staff themselves. I can recall that Mr. JRD Tata always insisted in carrying his own briefcase and most of us followed his example. Just shows how times have changed.
To elaborate on the point made earlier in this Post, Manju and I have come to a fork in our lives and have decided to give up our house and move to a Retirement Continuing Care Community. We have placed a deposit for an apartment in the Independent Living Section of this Community. If, and when, we need assistance in our day to day life, Memory Care or full time nursing, such facilities exist and are provided by this Retirement Community.
The Community has a requirement that anyone who moves there must be of able body and mind and hence, we could not wait until we actually had “one foot on the other side”.
It was a difficult decision to make and it also took quite some effort and time to convince some of our children that the decision was the right one and we waited to place the deposit until we had complete agreement from them.
This Community is situated in Palm Beach Gardens and has Corporate membership of the PGA Resort and hence, all residents can avail of the Resorts’ various facilities such as Golf (they have 5 courses), 9 restaurants, Spa, Massage Parlor and a well equipped Gym.
The apartment that we have selected has two bedrooms and has been completely gutted and is in the process of being refurbished - new floors, cabinets, bathrooms and kitchen appliances. Weekly maid service and full maintenance of the appliances, plumbing and electricity is included in the price which, I must state, is pretty steep. But since it takes away many headaches in old age, is well worth it.
Living in the Community assures us daily continental breakfast and 30 meals every month. We have a choice of lunch or dinner in any one of the 5 restaurants, plus Valet Service, which includes parking. Once we move in, I will be better able to describe all the facilities. We plan to move once we have sold our house which has been put on the market.
Meanwhile, let me get back to 1980/81 or the 9 months that we spent in Kuwait before moving to the USA.
I received two letters from Saroj Datta concerning subjects that he thought would be of interest to me.
First was the question of traffic rights that ALIA, Jordanian Airlines had been pressing for and a subject on which I have written in great detail in earlier Posts. Saroj said that Mr. Raghu Raj went to Delhi for a meeting at the Ministry and on his return instructed him (Saroj) to prepare a Memo justifying the grant of traffic rights to ALIA. Saroj was taken aback and reminded RR of the Notes that Mr. Sethi had sent up to Head Office on two occasions, detailing the discussions that he and Mr. Appusamy had had with the Chairman of ALIA which clearly showed no justification for such rights.
According to Saroj, RR then instructed him to withdraw the Notes from the files and prepare a document clearly justifying such rights. It would appear, Saroj indicated, that Naresh Goyal had finally found a “willing” recipient for the “inducements” that he was offering to get these rights for ALIA.
Second was the profit/loss results for the latest financial year. We had all along booked flight coupon revenue as and when the coupon was uplifted. RR changed this policy and the entire revenue was booked as soon as the first flight coupon of the ticket was uplifted. This gave AI tremendous additional revenue in the first year of the new allocation system. Saroj said that it was because of this change in booking revenue that AI’s financial results for the year 1980/81 were far “rosier” than they would have been.
By the end of July 1981, I had accomplished most of the tasks signed to me by KU’s Chairman. Nine months had elapsed and I was anxious to move to the USA before schools opened and the children were enrolled in good time. KU applied to the U.S. Embassy for L-1 visas for me and my family, which was rejected as I had not served a full year with KU. They then asked if we could be given B-1 and B-2 visas for the interim period, which request was also rejected on the grounds of “subterfuge.
I personally met the US Consul who flatly refused to assist me and went so far as to state “Why don’t you use WASTA (influence) in the right quarters in the Government?’
I was in a quandary as schools were due to open in early September and here we were at the end of July. I did not want the children to miss the school openings.
Fortune did, however, come to my rescue by accident. It appeared that an American national who was married to a Kuwaiti was unhappy and wanted to escape with her daughter to the USA. The US Consul arranged for this woman and child to get away without the knowledge of her husband. This created a furore and the Kuwait Government declared the Consul persona non grata.
An Indian lady who was working in the Consul Division promptly called me and asked me to come and meet the Vice-Consul who happily granted me and the family B-1 and B2 visas. And so, we arranged our flights and left for New York on August 8, 1981 with 37 pieces of baggage. SK (Gulu) Gulati was at the airport to receive us and in his inimitable style, smoothened our way through Immigration and Customs.
Kuwait Airways had rented a house for us in Scarsdale, a town we had selected after consulting various friends. It had a great School District and was connected by express trains with Grand Central Station. KU also gave us adequate funds to furnish it and we spent the initial week in a hotel in nearby White Plains before our furniture was delivered.
When we enrolled both the boys in the High and Middle Schools respectively, we learnt that the schools required certification that the boys had been adequately vaccinated. Dr. BK Palit came to our rescue and we were able to produce the necessary certificates.
We had hardly settled in when we had our first house guests. The first one was the wife of a Travel Agent friend from India and the next was Sashi Menon who came from California to play tennis in the US Open. I believe I have written in an earlier Post about his visit and also the dinner hosted by us for the Amritraj family. The Travel Agent soon followed and this was the beginning of a constant stream of visitors, so much so that Martin, my chauffeur, named our house The Sethi Hilton.
By early September, we had somewhat settled down in our new surroundings and I was commuting to Manhattan by car. The Kuwait Airways office was located in Rockefeller Center and had inadequate space and while I had my own Secretary, I had to share the room of the Area Sales Manager whenever I was in town. The atmosphere in the office was, however, rather strained and I will comment on this in a future Post.
