While the government has already paid Rs 250 crore to the ailing national carrier for carrying out VVIP duties and flights to evacuate Indians from Libya and Yemen, officials said another Rs 173 crore was expected soon.
They said some banks have also been approached to help Air India to face the "real cash crunch" and pay the staff salaries.
Government has made it clear that it attached "utmost importance to the credible revival of Air India", with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying he would ask Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to take "expeditious decisions" to revamp the ailing carrier.
It is expected that the government would take a decision to infuse the third tranche of equity of Rs 1,200 crore soon. So far it has injected Rs 1,200 crore and Rs 800 crore in two tranches in 2009-10, raising the airline's equity base to Rs 2,145 crore.
Government has acknowledged that Air India was "passing through a difficult phase for the last few years", an official spokesperson said today.
Soon after the merger of Indian Airlines and Air India, the global economy went through a severe recession and jet fuel prices hit an all time high. A highly competitive aviation market made an early recovery all the more difficult. All these factors resulted in losses during the last few years.
The government has also asked the airline to prepare a 8 to 10-year-plan of resource generation to revamp itself by fully implementing the turnaround programme.
According to the latest revival plan prepared by the SBICaps, the airline would require an equity support of Rs 43,255 crore over next 10 years. Of this, Rs 8,372 crore would be required in 2011-12, Rs 6,600 crore to meet immediate requirements and Rs 1,772 crore to pay back aircraft loans.
The government was also considering early operationalisation of the proposed subsidiaries for ground handling and MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) so that the issue of equity infusion can be taken up by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in the next few weeks.
Once the two subsidiaries are operationalised, the airline would be able to transfer almost 19,000 of its 40,000 employees to them, officials said.
The airline has already floated the two companies which are ready to be operationalised as soon as the government nod is received, they said.
The two companies are Air India Engineering Services Limited to carry out MRO operations and Air India Transport Services Limited for ground handling. The officials claimed that both subsidiaries would be able to earn profits right from the first year itself.
The problem of integrating about 40,000 employees is being dealt with by Justice Dharmadhikari Committee which would address the long-pending human resource issues of the airline in a time-bound manner.