Air India gets a new COO from Singapore Airlines

Air India appointed Captain Basil Kwauk as its new Chief Operations Officer (COO), replacing Captain Klaus Goersch, who will move on by the end of the month. Air India’s CEO, Campbell Wilson, announced Kwauk's appointment in an internal note to employees on Tuesday. Wilson, in the same note, thanked Goersch for the integration the airline concluded in recent weeks. This included merging full-service airline Vistara into Air India and its low-cost arm AirAsia India into Air India Express. The complex legal and operational merger with two varied work cultures – Air India was privatized in 2022 and is getting used to a new way of functioning while Vistara was launched by Tata Group and Singapore Airlines around a decade back – is still a work in progress. Many were surprised by Tuesday’s announcement, as Goersch was appointed only in October last year to oversee Flight Operations, Engineering, Ground Operations, Integrated Operations Control (IOCC), and Cabin Crew functions. The then incumbent COO Captain RS Sandhu, an old Air India hand, had already extended his service with Air India beyond his superannuation date, was moved to an advisory role with a particular focus on the harmonization of the four Tata airlines’ operating procedures, the Airbus A350 entry-into-service program and to assist the team in establishing Air India’s new training academy. “We are pleased to have Klaus join the Air India family. Having worked at some of the best airlines in the world, he brings a wealth of knowledge and experience that is valuable to the ongoing transformation at Air India. At Air India, we remain committed to building top leadership as we continue to invest in all the resources that are required to take the airline to the upper echelons of global aviation,” Campbell had said in a media statement released then. Goersch was CEO of Lionheart Enterprises before joining Air India. For two years ending in 2020, he was also the COO of British Airways. Given that the top team at Air India has been handpicked only in the last two years the sudden exit was even more noticeable. What many in the airline found even more perplexing was the “return” of Kwauk who had joined Vistara in 2017 as its senior vice-president of flight operations a secondment from Singapore Airlines where he had worked for over 20 years. Singapore Airlines has a 25.1% stake in Air India through its ownership in Vistara (where it owned 49%). Both the top spots in Air India are now with executives from Singapore Airlines. CEO Wilson was working with Singapore Airlines’s subsidiary Scoot before he joined Air India in 2022.

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