Air India Express scaled
Nipun Agarwal is to be the new Chairman of the board of Air India Express (AIE), the lost cost arm of Air India,   with Campbell Wilson stepping down from the position. Agarwal is a Tata Sons executive who joined the group in 2017 while Campbell is from Singapore Airlines (SIA). Incidentally, Agarwal is already on the board of AIE. He will also continue his duties as Chief Commercial Officer of Air India even as he takes over Chairmanship of the board of Air India Express.
Agarwal is among those who are credited for striking a hard pricing bargain with Airbus and Boeing before Air India sealed a deal to acquire 470 aircraft in 2023 (How secret talks in London led to Air India’s gigantic plane order | Company News – Business Standard).
AIE is the low cost arm of Air India while Air India is the full service airlines. Both the airlines are jointly owned by Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines. Currently Tata Sons holds a majority stake in Air India while SIA has a stake of 25.1 percent in the Indian carrier (SIA and Air India explore opportunities to deepen recently confirmed relationship – The Economic Times).
The announcement of the change in AIE’s Chairmanship  was announced by Campbell in an internal memo viewed by AirInsight. The memo said that in his new role Agarwal will be enable to ensure better coordination of the Group’s network and commercial efforts, Campbell said.
Captain Basil Kwauk, Air India’s Chief Operating Officer, will replace Campbell on the AIE board once all necessary regulatory approvals are secured, the communication adds. Kwauk is a SIA employee who has been seconded to AI.  He joined Air India earlier this year (Basil Kwauk will replace Klaus Goersch as Air India COO – The Hindu).
“As you may be well aware, over the past 18 months we have completed many structural changes critical to transforming and rebuilding of Air India Group including merger of our four airlines into two, consolidation of our non-flying teams into Gurugram and refreshing the leadership teams of both Air India and AIE. We have also worked hard to improve the communications, collaboration and coordination between our full service and low cost airlines across all functions, for the benefit of each airline and the Group over all,” Campbell added in the internal memo.
The Indian government divested Air India in 2021 when a consortium of Tata Sons and SIA emerged as the winner. At the time of winning the AI bid Tata Sons were the owners of two airlines in India —- Vistara and AirAsia India. While Vistara was a full service airline AirAsia India was a low cost airline.
In addition, the government owned Air India, which Tata Sons won in 2021, which had a full service airline Air India and a low cost arm, Air India Express. After coming on board Air India, Tata Sons decided that there will be only two airlines.
What this meant was that AirAsia India merged into Air India Express while Vistara ceased to exist with Air India taking over its crew and planes to operate the full service Air Inia. The full integration of Air India and Vistara was achieved in October last year (Air India completes merger with Vistara | Tata group).
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