Tata Sons Effects Major Reshuffle In Air India’s Top Management

The group chairman N Chandrasekaran issued the order, according to which, Air India veterans RS Sandhu and Vinod Hejmadi have been re-appointed as Chief of Operations and Chief Financial officer.

Meanwhile, Nipun Aggarwal appointed as Chief Commercial Officer and Suresh Dutt Tripathi as Chief Human Resources Officer.

Aggarwal, who is also Senior Vice President at Tata Sons, replaces Air India veteran Meenakshi Malik, while Tripathi, who was Vice President of Human Resources at Tata Steel from 2012 to 2021, succeeds AI’s Amrita Sharan.

Malik and Sharan were on Friday appointed as Advisors to the CEO of Air India. As the Tata Group is yet to appoint the CEO of Air India, Malik and Sharan will currently be advisors to Chandrasekaran.

After a competitive bidding process, the government had on October 8 last year sold Air India to Talace Private Limited — a subsidiary of the Tata group’s holding company — for ₹18,000 crore.

Tata Sons last month named N Chandrasekaran as the chairman of Air India, the airline which was acquired by Tata Group from the central government last year.

Air India had earlier announced that former Turkish Airlines boss Ilker Ayci declined to take up the top job, despite being named the airline’s CEO. Ayci – who oversaw extensive cost-cutting at Turkish Airlines – was chosen as the debt-ridden carrier’s first foreign CEO in mid-February after Tata group bought it back from the government following 69 years in state ownership.

Satya Ramaswamy, who has worked at Tata Consultancy Services before, was appointed as Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Air India.

Rajesh Dogra was appointed as the Head of Customer Experience and Ground Handling at Air India, it mentioned.

“The new appointees will exercise the powers of functional/departmental heads as per the delegation of authority. We wish them all the very best in their new role,” Chandrasekaran stated in the order.