Tata Sons on Thursday appointed Campbell Wilson as the new chief executive officer and managing director of Air India, PTI reported.
Wilson, 50, is currently the chief executive officer of Scoot, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines. He has 26 years of experience in the aviation industry, Air India said in a statement.
“I am delighted to welcome Campbell to Air India,” Tata Sons and Air India Chairperson N Chandrasekaran said. “He is an industry veteran having worked in key global markets cutting across multiple functions. Further, Air India would benefit from his added experience of having built an airline brand in Asia.”
On January 27, Tata Sons acquired the debt-ridden Air India for Rs 18,000 crore nearly 70 years after it had been nationalised.
In March, Ilker Ayci, the former chairperson of Turkish Airlines, had declined Tata Group’s offer to be the chief executive officer of Air India, two weeks after the company announced his appointment. In a statement, Ayci had said that he turned down the offer after having read about “attempts to colour his appointment with undesirable colours” in some sections of the Indian media.
His reference was towards the demand by Swadeshi Jagran Manch – an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – to block Ayci’s appointment citing “national security” and his previous political links.
Ayci was an adviser in 1994 to Tayyip Erdogan when the Turkish president was the mayor of Istanbul.
Ashwani Mahajan, co-convenor of the RSS-affiliated Swadeshi Jagran Manch, had said that Ayci’s appointment should not be approved since Turkey had been sympathetic to Pakistan.
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