Air India May Lose 'National Career' Tag... ...

The Union Cabinet is set to meet soon to decide if beleaguered state-owned carrier Air India should retain its 'national' character at all. It will also debate if strategic disinvestment is the best way forward for the airline, which is estimated to have accumulated Rs 7,200 crore in losses in 2009-10.

With most of Air India's woes emanating from its international operations - where it loses around Rs 3,000 crore a year on 30 routes - a group of ministers (GoM), chaired by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, has recommended that the airline stop flying to these routes.

"This will change the character of Air India," a government functionary said, adding this would turn Air India into a regional airline.

The civil aviation ministry is preparing a detailed note for the Cabinet on the carrier's financial health and turnaround measures recommended by the GoM. "Cutting down loss-making international routes will have serious implications. Basically, the government has to decide if Air India continues to fly abroad or within India alone," the source said.

At the same time, the Cabinet may also debate the issue of strategic disinvestment as a long-term viable option for the carrier.

"The government cannot pump money into the National Aviation Company of India Ltd (Nacil) forever," the government source said. But, it is likely that the Cabinet refers back some of these issues to the GoM for its detailed and considered opinion, the source added.

A major blow to Nacil's finances comes from prestigious but loss-making daily non-stop flights to New York from Delhi and Mumbai on the latest long-range fleet of Boeing, accounting for losses to the tune of Rs 750 crore a year.

The GoM, set up to monitor Air India's turnaround plan, was also to decide on the politically sensitive matter of wage cuts of Air India's 31,000 employees. But it has now left the decision for the Cabinet.

To avail government bailout, the carrier was asked to undertake cost-cutting measures that would help it save around Rs 2,000 crore by March 2010. Air India was able to cut costs to the tune of Rs 700-800 crore till December last year.

As part of its turnaround strategy, the carrier has shortlisted five candidates for the post of chief commercial. A newly formed interview panel will interview these candidates on March 27

The carrier recently received a shot in the arm with the government releasing Rs 400 crore as a first tranche towards equity infusion. Air India had asked for Rs 5,000 crore as equity infusion and a letter of comfort from the government to convert its high-cost debt into low-cost ones.

Galaxy with Key to Milky Way Creation Found... ...

A team of scientists from the UK and the US has discovered a galaxy far away from us which is churning out stars 250 times faster than our Milky Way. The discovery of the galaxy, about 10 billion light years away from the earth, will help researchers understand how the Milky Way was formed.

Galaxy SMM J2135- 0102 has four distinct star- forming regions, each of which is 100 times brighter than Milky Way locations such as the Orion Nebula. The team which discovered the galaxy was led by scientists from the UK's Durham University.

It also included researchers from European Southern University and the Massachusetts based Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics." The new galaxy is forming stars at about 250 suns per year. Our Milky Way is forming about two suns per year," lead scientist Mark Swinbank of Durham University said. Because of the time it takes light to reach the earth, the scientists observed the galaxy as it would have appeared 10 billion years ago - just three billion years after the Big Bang.

It was Milky Way- sized at the time. But today, 10 billion years later, it would have grown into a giant elliptical galaxy much more massive than the Milky Way." When we look at the stars in the Milky Way, we find that most are about 10 billion years old. So, to understand how the Milky Way was formed, we must look back to these times. In this study, we have done just that," Swinbank said. "The main result of our study is that we have located four individual star- forming regions.

Each of these regions is forming stars much more rapidly than we would expect, given their sizes. In essence, the regions are much more efficient at forming stars than we typically see in the local universe," he said. The findings indicate star formation was more vigorous in the early universe. The paper was published on Sunday in the science journal Nature.