Air India may get Alex Cruz, an aviation veteran with rich experience of heading both full service and low cost airlines, as its CEO. Cruz, 55, was chairman and CEO of British Airways for about five years till 2020 and before that he headed Spanish low cost Vueling.<\/p>\n
Pandemic-hit BA had in October 2020 cut 13,000 jobs. At that time, Cruz had stepped down as the airline\u2019s chief executive and then a transition period gave up as chairman too. Cruz LinkedIn profile shows he is currently an investor, board member and adviser on some companies. An MS in industrial engineering from Ohio State University, Cruz is also a professor at the IESE Business School.<\/p>\n
Comments from Tatas on Cruz selection have been sought and are awaited.<\/p>\n
The Tata Group last week took over AI and is learnt to be finalising a team of top notch professionals to revive the airline, a clearly uphill task. The new board of AI is likely to be led by Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran himself.<\/p>\n
Air India\u2019s turnaround as a comfortable and punctual airline for passengers and a profitable one for the owners will be among the biggest aviation success stories globally.<\/p>\n
Tatas \u2014 now running AI, AI Express, Vistara and AirAsia India \u2014 are yet to spell out their plans for the airline structure. Whether there will be three airlines \u2014 one low cost by merging AI Express and AirAsia India; AI and Vistara \u2014 or two \u2014 a mega AI that merges the two LCCs and Vistara \u2014 is not yet known. Vistara will remain a separate entity till Singapore Airlines, 49 per cent stakeholder in it, agrees to a merger with AI.<\/p>\n
While the \u201chardware\u201d of renovating interiors of AI\u2019s now-ageing fleet \u2014 a much needed thing \u2014 and\/or inducting new planes will take time, the Tatas have already taken some experts on board to have some visible improvements on the \u201csoftware\u201d side. The low hanging fruits are enhanced meals that group company and India\u2019s largest inflight caterer, TajSats, is working on and warmer hospitality from the frontline personnel like the cabin crew. To be sure, AI inflight meals and cabin crew have always been good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Air India may get Alex Cruz, an aviation veteran with rich experience of heading both full service and low cost airlines, as its CEO. Cruz, 55, was chairman and CEO of British Airways for about five years till 2020 and before that he headed Spanish low cost Vueling. Pandemic-hit BA had in October 2020 cut 13,000 jobs. At that time, Cruz had stepped down as the airline\u2019s chief executive and then a transition period gave up as chairman too. Cruz LinkedIn profile shows he is currently an investor, board member and adviser on some companies. An MS in industrial engineering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-466041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-aviation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}