Air India’s transformation is still a work in progress: CEO Campbell Wilson

Air India’s progress over the last 12 months has been "nothing short of stunning" and there is much more to be done, chief executive Campbell Wilson said on Friday, as the previously state-run airline completes one year as a Tata Group company.

“We have set out to create an airline that ranks among the best in the world and will proudly represent the new India on the global stage. And we have made quite remarkable progress in a very short space of time,” Wilson said in a note to employees.

ET has seen the note.

On January 27 last year, the government formally handed over Air India to Tata Sons after it emerged as the winner in a bidding process for the airline.

The Tata Group had founded Air India as Tata Airlines in October 1932. The government nationalised it in 1953.

While the Tatas are bound by multiple restrictions in the deal for one year where they couldn’t fire any employees or change the brand, the new owners started renegotiating multiple contracts of the airline to bring down the cost of operations. It has also started the work for a merger of AirAsia India and Air India Express to form a low-cost airline while merging Vistara with Air India to form a full-service carrier.

Last year in February, in his maiden address to employees of the airline, Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran had identified four core areas on which Air India would focus: providing best-in-class customer service, making it the most technologically advanced airline in the world, upgrading and modernising the fleet, and hospitality - both in-flight and off-flight.


AUGMENTING FLEET
While an order for more 450 aircraft is still under works, the group is augmenting the airline’s fleet in the short term by leasing 30 more airliners as it eyes expansion and fleet revamp. This will increase its fleet size by 25%. Air India is also refurbishing seats and interiors of old aircraft, spending $400 million and has brought grounded aircraft back to service.

On-time performance of the airline has improved. It had set up a cross-functional team, with employees from various departments such as network planning, engineering, ground services and integrated operations control centre to assess flight schedules.

However, there has been a serious controversy over the way the airline handled an incident in November last year, where an allegedly drunk business-class passenger was accused of urinating on a senior citizen woman in a flight. The aviation regulator levied a penalty of Rs 30 lakh on the airline and suspended the flight’s captain, saying the situation was not handled and reported according to regulations.

After that, the airline has come out with a new alcohol policy and system of reporting unruly passengers by the crew.

GROUP EXPERTISE
Air India, after a long time, has also started hiring, poaching employees from rivals and also bringing in executives from other Tata Group companies.

The conglomerate, which has a presence from steel to digital sectors, is banking on talent and expertise from its allied business to turnaround the loss-making carrier. It gave charge of the crucial commercial department at Air India to Nipun Aggarwal, who was a senior vice-president at Tata Sons. An investment banker by profession, Aggarwal played a key role in the year-long process of Tata’s takeover of Air India and is now also heading its transformation project.

The company appointed Suresh Dutt Tripathi as chief human resource officer. Tripathi earlier headed HR at Tata Steel. Rajesh Dogra, a Tata Consultancy Services veteran, is now head of customer experience and ground handling at Air India while Satya Ramaswamy, head of strategic initiatives at Tata Digital, is now the chief digital and technology officer at the airline.

A team from TCS is working on to integrate the airline’s software with the One Tata Operating Network and on boarding it to the Tata Neu super app of the group.