An argument I often hear on this board, by some more than others, is that AI had the right strategy/horse/car/etc but just had the wrong management/jockey/driver/etc. I'm not sure this is right. Here's my reasoning:

AI seems to be an airline in which the management is inactive. They have not done anything new or remotely risky (perhaps because their managers don't have a real incentive to make AI profitable). The only thing they did introduce was IX, and I bet this was because of some kind of political pressure from Keralites. Of course an airline (or any company for that matter) that does not take any risks will be just as it is. This is what AI did.

Other airlines took their chances and failed. The other airlines took their chances because they had too: after 9/11 and the rise in oil prices in 2006-08, they had to do something innovative or they would go out of business. AI did not have to take these chances since they were backed by the government.

Supporters of AI look at the result of the game and conclude that the losers were dumb. However, that's not the right way to judge intelligence (or competence or rationality or whatever you want to call it). That is not right because outcomes can be influenced by [both good and bad] luck, which is what I think happened here (as in no one predicted the great recession). To truly judge intelligence, you should look at the strategies they employed at the start of the game, given the information available at that time.

Once you apply the framework I described, it's not clear to me that AI has the right strategy and IT/9W don't. Thoughts, comments, feedback appreciated.