Air India made cash loss of Rs 3,600 crore in FY 2019-20: Rajiv Bansal

The Union Civil Aviation Ministry confirmed Air India's second phase of the strategic disinvestment from January 5, 2021. The process will begin with the announcement of the names of the qualified bidders.

Moneycontrol News

December 29, 2020 / 09:26 PM IST

Air India flight carrying Indians from Diamond Princess (Image - Twitter/@MEAIndia)

Air India's chairman Rajiv Bansal on December 29 said that the disinvestment-bound national airliner made a cash loss of Rs 3,600 crore in FY 2019-20.

Maintaining that the loss was much less than FY 2018-19, Bansal stated transporting stranded Indians from overseas since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in sequential improvement in its income this financial year.

"Our financials have improved every quarter. Second quarter was better than the first quarter. The third quarter has been better. This is a good traffic season. A lot of international traffic has been there to various destinations, particularly the US. The United States and Canada continue to be our prime markets," Business-Standard quoted Bansal as saying.

A number of credible bidders available for Air India, says Hardeep Singh Puri

Meanwhile, the Union Civil Aviation Ministry confirmed Air India's second phase of the strategic disinvestment from January 5, 2021. The process will begin with the announcement of the names of the qualified bidders.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

Show