Mumbai, Oct 14(ANI): Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel on Wednesday held a meeting with Air India management and staff unions in Mumbai to analyze the national carrier’s rationalization and turnaround plans.

While addressing the media after the meet, Patel said that the Government would introduce a series of methods for cost cutting and to increase profits.

“We have reviewed the functioning of Air India, we met unions and explained government plans to turn the airline around. One of the steps would be the induction of equity and the another major step would be restructuring high cost debt to low cost debt,” Praful Patel said.

Patel further said that Air India would retire the large fleet of leased aircrafts to replace them with new ones, and would try to capitalize on the booming aviation industry.

“Air traffic has improved over the last six months and overall the market scenario has witnessed improvement in the last month or two and that does send out a signal of cautious optimism that aviation industry would lead to a road to recovery though it may not be as thick as we witnessed a few years ago,” he added.

The Minister also said that all the Air India employees have shown a lot of understanding over the salary related issues, which had resulted in a four-day strike last month.

“Air India employees have shown a lot of understanding. It seems management and unions can forge an understanding for the way forward,” Patel said. (ANI)