Addendum
IndiGo CEO takes voluntary time out from the airline business
May 1st 2018
Forty-two-year-old Aditya Ghosh, until April 26 the CEO of India’s largest carrier by numbers, has resigned to “work out what he wants to do next”. Read More » He will formally step down as president on July 31, the airline statement said on April 27.
IndiGo co-founder and billionaire owner of conglomerate Interglobe, Rahul Bhatia, was immediately appointed interim CEO of the low-cost carrier but it is widely believed he is keeping the seat warm for airline veteran, Gregory Taylor. Expatriate Taylor, who was named at the beginning of the month as a senior advisor to the carrier, is expected to be IndiGo’s next CEO once his appointment is approved by regulators.
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Bhatia told media in India that “Aditya had been saying for the last few months that he wanted to get off the treadmill of running an airline and the board had to finally accede to his wish”.
“Aditya was at the helm all these years and we will miss him, but the company will not miss a heartbeat – the transition will be seamless,” he said.
“The airline is planning for the future. In the areas of network planning and revenue management, India does not have resident expertise and had to bring in talent from overseas who have deep functional knowledge.”
Taylor has spent more than three decades at United Airlines and also U.S. Airways, where he worked with then CEO and chairman, Rakesh Gawal, the other co-founder of IndiGo. Most recently, from 2016-2017, Taylor was the executive vice president of revenue management and network planning at the airline. His areas of expertise include corporate, strategy, network and fleet planning, finance, cost management and airline express operations.
Bhatia handpicked Interglobe in-house lawyer Ghosh to run the infant LCC in 2008. Ghosh led IndiGo for nearly a decade, growing it into the nation’s biggest airline by market share. Under him, the airline placed record aircraft orders worth billions of dollars, had a blockbuster IPO and became the biggest budget airline in Asia by market valuation.
IndiGo built its brand on being on time and expanded at breakneck speed. It has a fleet of 160 aircraft that rivals Jet Airways, but it’s on time performance has wobbled, some say crashed, in recent months as its fleet grew, engine problems on its new A320neo persisted and incidents of staff insensitivity and poor service acquired traction on social media. The airline has more than 400 aircraft on its order book.
“Ghosh has been instrumental in bringing IndiGo to the top position in Indian aviation over the past 10 years,” founder and CEO of Dubai-based Martin Consulting LLC, Mark Martin, said by phone to Orient Aviation. “IndiGo shares may have a temporary blip as they are overvalued. We don’t expect a major sell-off as the airline has good leadership and is strongly entrenched in the aviation business.”
His departure comes as the carrier began a shift from its strategy of operating one aircraft type across its fleet to a mixed aircraft model. It also has begun buying planes outright instead of leasing them and is planning a low-cost, long-haul subsidiary.
In the last 18 months, IndiGo has added several expatriates to its executive ranks. They include chief financial officer, Rohit Philip, another United Airlines veteran; chief strategy officer, Willy Boulter, who was most recently board director and chief commercial officer at TAAG Angola Airlines but also was vice president partner network planning at Etihand Airways, group commercial officer at Virgin Atlantic, and had management appointments at Cathay Pacific Airways and as IATA vice president Asia-Pacific in Singapore.
In February, Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, then the boss of GoAir, moved across to IndiGo as chief operating officer. Austrian Prock-Schauer was Jet Airways CEO for six years to 2009 and worked on restructuring programmes at Bmibaby and Niki.
Other expatriates recruited to IndiGo are former AsiaAsia network expert, Jason Herter, as vice president operations and control centre; another United Airlines veteran, Cindy Szadokierski, vice president airport operations and customer services and chief planning officer, Michael Swiatek.
