When Austrian Gustav Baldauf, a former pilot with 14,000 hours of flying experience, took over as chief operating officer at Air India in the troubled times of 2008, many thought it was the turning point that the beleaguered airline had been waiting for. Its day-to-day operations needed as much fixing as its mounting debt and loss of market share did.
Yet, on February 28, when Baldauf resigned from the company, it looked like the cause had been lost. Operations were as muddled as before: The merger of Air India and Indian Airlines was still on paper with the two wings operating pretty much independently; there was a strike notice from the staff union; debt had mounted to Rs. 15,000 crore; two more senior officials — Pawan Arora, COO of Air India Express and Stephen Sukumar, chief training officer — had also quit.
And, at least to casual observers, it looked like the new civil aviation minister, Vayalar Ravi, had taken things in his own hands, undermining the nascent turnaround strategy that was being put in place. A career trade unionist who had been in the labour movement for nearly 60 years, Ravi sent shivers down the collective spine of pro-reform forces. It was a reasonable question to ask if Air India was slipping out of the control of the business-side guys such as Chairman and Managing Director Arvind Jadhav.
15/03/11 Cuckoo Paul/Business Standard
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