The Public Accounts Committee, PAC , today questioned some top officials of Air India and erstwhile Indian Airlines on merger fallout, fleet acquisition and complaints of poor passenger services.

Air India has been asked to submit all documents on merger and acquisition from the conceptual stage onwards to the panel within a week. The officials were grilled on their plan to acquire 50 aircraft which quickly got the government's nod recently while their earlier plan to buy 18 additional planes could not materialise even after six years.

Officials of the erstwhile Indian Airlines were grilled by the PAC members for their poor passenger service.

The AI officials included K M Unni, S Venkat and F J Vaz dealing with airframe, finance and commercial operations besides representatives of erstwhile IA-Vipin Sharma, Deepak Brara and V Bhandari.

The grilling was based on a recent CAG report on Civil Aviation which had said that the decision to acquire 111 planes by Air India through debt was a recipe for disaster and should have raised alarm in the government.

In its latest report tabled in Parliament in September, the public audit body also called the merger of two erstwhile state-run carriers–Air India and Indian Airlines–ill-timed and said that the financial case for the merger was not adequately validated prior to the merger.