The CEO and managing director of the country's flagship carrier takes stock of the transformation programme and says he hopes to provide customers a glimpse of the change from this year
Campbell Wilson has had a hectic year. As the CEO and managing director of Air India, Wilson is overseeing a transformation never attempted before in Indian aviation. On one hand, he has to turn around Air India, the 91-year-old airline which has suffered due to decades of under-investment from the government, before the Tata Group bought it out last year. On the other, he is looking after the merger of four Tata Group-owned airlines into two, with a plan to create a full-service and low-cost carrier within the group. This year, Air India placed the biggest order in global aviation when it announced the purchase of 470 aircraft from Boeing and Airbus.
In an interview with Forbes India, Wilson talks about the challenges, the positives, the reason behind the mega aircraft order, and the path ahead for Air India. Edited Excerpts.
Q: How do you look back at the year you have spent at the airline?
It's been a fun experience, but certainly busy. What we're trying to do is quite unprecedented. Merging four airlines into two, taking a government-owned airline private, growing it significantly, and trying to take it to the top leagues in terms of performance and experience. To do all of those concurrently has not been done before.
So it's going to take a while. We've said even in our transformation plan that it's a five-year project. What we've done in the first year is a very healthy start. A lot of the foundational items have been addressed, But it's still a work in progress and we've made a good start.