Based on Yesterday's Hints From the New York Times, You May Want to Bypass Air India

Frequently, the airfare search engines will disclose that Air India has the cheapest flights to London or a number of other destinations. If you're a reader of The New York Times, you may decide to book a higher-priced airline. In a lengthy article appearing in yesterday's business section, the newspaper came close to alleging that the state-owned carrier of India has potential safety problems. It doesn't exactly say so, but its cautiously worded opinions come close to doing so.

According to the Times, the airline suffers especially from a lack of trained co-pilots, who are nonetheless often left at the controls while the pilot leaves the cockpit to take a smoke. In a recent incident, the co-pilot accidentally caused the plane to go into a dive and was at a complete loss to figure out how to right the aircraft. It had reached an altitude of only 7,000 feet when the pilot succeeded in re-entering the cockpit to end the plunge.

This is one of the lesser examples cited by the Times. It pictures an airline abandoned by its own national audience, lacking skilled leadership, suffering from many empty seats, pasting newspapers over the cockpit windows to tone down the glare of sunlight, and offending in a dozen other ways. If you credit the opinions of the Times -- and they are only opinions, although strongly voiced -- you may decide to pay a little more for your next trans-Atlantic flight, rather than go on Air India.