Archana Shukla

Air India has appointed former Ethiopian Airlines chief Tewolde Gebremariam as CEO, replacing Campbell Wilson as the carrier faces a record loss of nearly $2.3bn, a deadly Ahmedabad-London crash that killed 260 people, operational failures and delayed fleet expansion. Gebremariam is credited with successfully steering Ethiopian Airlines through the Boeing 737 Max crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, but at Air India he must rebuild employee morale and workplace culture, improve safety and operations, expand and refurbish the fleet, and reshape the network to reduce losses. Chairman N Chandrasekaran has warned that the turnaround could take up to a decade.