Air India: Even worse than you thought

The next time you hop on an Air India plane, check to make sure it has an engine.  Plagued by stories of rats in the cabin and slap fights between passengers and crew, the bankrupt state-owned airline now has to 'fess up to underreporting its miserable financial condition by as much as 50%, according to an audit conducted by India's Comptroller and Auditor General reported in the Hindustan Times.

So what does that mean for regular folks (i.e. the accounting illiterate)?  Well, for one thing, it undercuts all the supposed progress that the carrier claimed to have made in cutting costs and increasing revenue so that one day, just maybe, it might make a profit.  That's right: AI had said it had reduced the money it lost to $1.2 billion in 2010 from $1.6 billion in 2009, but the audit reveals its losses actually *increased* to $1.9 billion.

Their customer service didn't get any better either, in my humble opinion.