The government is treading very cautiously on the issue of senior level appointments at Air India.
The last time seasoned outside professionals had been inducted to ensure the airline stages a turnaround, the move had backfired.
Catfights had broken out in board meetings between independent directors, functional directors and government nominees over these appointments and ultimately, three of the four such officials were made to resign.
Since then, several top level positions across Air India have been vacant. So, to save itself the blushes this time, the government has decided not to look for outside people to man these key posts.
Air India needs a director personnel and a director commercial. Also, positions are vacant for chief operating officers of low-cost subsidiary Air India Express as well as for Alliance Air. The post of director finance is also expected to fall vacant soon.
Airline officials said that the thinking this time around is to hire “from within”. Now whether this means eligible internal airline candidates would be promoted or qualified bureaucrats will be hired from other PSUs - this remains to be seen. The issue of salary for these posts is also under review, since there was all-round grumbling about “exorbitant” salaries offered to the professionals who had been brought in earlier. Pawan Arora had been appointed COO of AI Express, Stefan Sukumar as chief of training and Gustav Baldauf as COO of Air India.
Besides key functional posts, the airline also needs to fill the two vacancies for independent directors on its board. Anand Mahindra, the vice chairman and MD of Mahindra & Mahindra and former FICCI general secretary Amit Mitra had resigned as independent directors from the board, citing different reasons. But their exits came just when there was a change of guard at the civil aviation ministry - Vayalar Ravi took over from Praful Patel as the new civil aviation minister - and there was speculation about the resignations coming in because of the change in ministers. Also, both these independent directors had carried their displeasure at Air India management’s key decisions, on more than one occasion, to the Prime Minister’s office (PMO).
Once again, in a bid to avert such an embarrassment, the names of the two new independent directors, which the government wants to appoint to the board, will now be vetted by the PMO itself.
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