'Qatar Airways 'reached out' to Tatas to jointly bid for Air India 4 years ago'

In an exclusive chat over telephone with the Times of India's Saurabh Sinha from Doha, Qatar Airways Group chief executive Akbar Al Baker Qatar Airways (QA) had reached out to Tatas four years back to jointly bid for Air India when the government had made its first attempt to sell off the Maharaja. “About four years back, we did show interest to partner with Mr Ratan Tata (for jointly bidding for AI). At that time he was not interested because they were already partner with Vistara (Singapore Airlines) and AirAsia. He at that time did not think of investing in AI. If Tata would have agreed to partner with us, we would have bid for AI that time. (AV by Ram Sinha)