Air India: A Committee Is Not A Captain

Air India's Rudderless Succession Shows Why Planning Matters

By Govindraj Ethiraj

Years ago, a senior executive at Hindustan Unilever told me that the odds of an external candidate parachuting into the chairman’s seat were essentially nil.

Replying to my off-the-record query regarding succession, a perennial source of intrigue in India’s corporate circles, he was unequivocal.

“We consistently build and promote our internal pipeline,” he explained, noting the premium the multinational places on organisational continuity.

From the day you join the company out of college, you are on a path to the top, at least potentially, he quipped.

HUL’s legendary management trainee programme operates as a corporate crucible.

By the time an executive ascends to the apex, they have typically traversed global markets and acquired a panoramic view of the consumer landscape.

This talent factory is so prolific that hundreds if not more of successful chief executives can trace their lineage back to the company, including Chanel's CEO Leena Nair who spent some 29 years in Unilever, of which at least 20 were in India.

It is a testament to the virtues of cultivating leadership diligently in times of calm.

Contrast this with another prominent conglomerate currently experiencing severe turbulence in its talent pipeline.

Air India, the Tata group’s flagship aviation turnaround which it acquitted in 2022, finds itself rudderless at a critical juncture.

Following the resignation of chief executive Campbell Wilson, who will depart well ahead of his 2027 contract, Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran has resorted to a somewhat classic corporate stopgap: a committee.

This interim panel of senior executives, which includes Chandrasekaran himself, is tasked with ensuring "continuity".

The Irony Is Inescapable

A chairman whose own tenure extension at Tata Sons remains a subject of polite speculation is now presiding over the continuity of an airline whose future is considered turbulent in the best of days.

The holding company, Tata Sons, grappling with its own labyrinthine leadership dynamics, is overseeing an unlisted company and airline still struggling to shed the bureaucratic sclerosis of its state-owned past.

A committee is a poor substitute for a captain though, especially when flying through a storm.

Air India has faced a barrage of crises over the past year: route deviations following border clashes in May 2025, the tragic crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner just a month later in Ahmedabad and soaring jet fuel costs exacerbated by geopolitical conflict this year.

Add to this the monumental challenge of integrating a disparate workforce and retrofitting a decrepit fleet that routinely draws the ire of long-haul passengers.

Even senior Air India pilots are heard harbouring deep misgivings about the carrier's operational resilience.

While external shocks impact airlines globally, Air India’s internal succession pipeline is a problem that is unique to the airline.

The current promotion process appears to have stalled, leaving two reported frontrunners in limbo: Nipun Aggarwal, the chief commercial officer and a former banker, and Vinod Kannan, industry veteran from Singapore Airlines and former head of Vistara, an airline started by the Tata Group before it bought Air-India and merged the two.

The decision is mired in complexity.

The Governance Lesson

Singapore Airlines, which holds a 25 per cent stake, would rightly demand a say, and possibly aligning the joint venture partners on this is causing some delays.

Furthermore, importing seasoned aviation talent from abroad is fraught with the bureaucratic friction of securing Indian security clearances.

The ultimate lesson here is one of corporate governance.

Conglomerates can ill afford to ignore succession planning and even in the calmest times must devote disproportionate time to it.

A continuing exercise that is and must be driven from the top.

Unilever has arguably always chosen the latter, ensuring a steady hand is always waiting in the wings.

There are surely many more such companies who have focussed on their pipelines, including within the Tata Group.

Air India, burdened by its past and paralysed by boardroom indecision, is learning the hard way that an airline navigating severe turbulence cannot be flown by committee.

It requires a single, decisive hand at the yoke.

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Rs 92,995 crore

That’s how much the combined market capitalisation of four of India’s 10 most-valued companies increased last week as benchmark indices extended their gains.

Top gainers:

• HDFC Bank: Added Rs 35,808 crore in market value

• Bharti Airtel: Added Rs 34,897 crore

• Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC): Added Rs 16,066 crore

• Reliance Industries: Added Rs 6,225 crore

Top laggards:

• Hindustan Unilever: Lost Rs 12,089 crore in market value

• Larsen & Toubro: Lost Rs 11,040 crore

• Tata Consultancy Services: Lost Rs 8,575 crore

• Bajaj Finance: Lost Rs 7,814 crore

• ICICI Bank: Lost Rs 6,315 crore

• State Bank of India: Lost Rs 3,461 crore

What This Means Going Forward: Analysts say markets drew support from encouraging first-quarter business updates, improving monsoon progress, and sustained foreign portfolio investor inflows. They expect investors to closely watch corporate earnings, crude oil prices, geopolitical developments, and foreign fund flows for cues on market direction.

India Sailor Missing In Gulf Strikes

India remains on alert after one national went missing when the commercial vessel GFS Galaxy came under attack off Oman's coast on Sunday. India's Foreign Ministry said 10 of the 11 Indian nationals aboard were rescued, while the embassy in Oman coordinates search efforts with local authorities. Iran said it had fired a warning shot at a vessel travelling an "unapproved route."

Critical Moment: The incident came amid a sharp escalation between US and Iranian forces across the Gulf, with Tehran again declaring the Strait of Hormuz closed after a ceasefire collapsed, Reuters reported. Iran struck US-linked sites in Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, injuring three in Qatar, while US forces hit over 140 Iranian targets. Washington maintains commercial traffic continues through the strait.

The Shift: Separately, India's Russian crude imports hit a record high in June, rising 34% month-on-month to €4.5 billion, per CREA data, even as Russia's overall oil revenues declined.

AI Hype Or Revenue?

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) plans to train up to 8,900 AI deployment engineers as it prepares for growing demand from clients looking to adopt artificial intelligence, Reuters reported.

The Turning Point: These engineers will help companies deploy AI tools, integrate them with existing systems and manage them after deployment. TCS is also looking to acquire AI companies to expand its capabilities faster. The announcement comes days after the IT giant said its annualised AI business had reached $2.6 billion.

Flashpoint: The move also adds context to TCS's broader AI ambitions. As Dev Chandrasekhar wrote in The Plinth for The Core, TCS has said AI will shape every part of its business in the years ahead. But he noted that TCS still earns the vast majority of its revenue from traditional IT services. Its annualised AI business stands at about 2 billion, a fraction of its roughly $30 billion annual revenue.

Fertiliser Price Shock

A weak monsoon could boost demand for water-soluble fertilisers this kharif season, but sharply higher prices remain the biggest risk to consumption, Soluble Fertilizer Industry Association (SFAI) President Rajib Chakraborty told PTI.

Catch Up Quick: The prices of key inputs have risen 60-100% over the past year after China curbed exports and tensions in West Asia disrupted supplies. Monoammonium phosphate (MAP), a key raw material, now trades at $1,500-1,600 a tonne, up from about $1,000.

Context: India imports around 4 lakh tonnes of water-soluble fertilisers annually and has limited domestic manufacturing. To manage supply disruptions, importers have diversified sourcing to Russia while relying on carryover stocks from last year, when excess rainfall reduced demand.

SFAI said patchy rainfall could encourage farmers to use more water-soluble fertilisers because they allow nutrients to be applied more efficiently through drip irrigation. But if prices stay high, many farmers may switch to cheaper subsidised fertilisers such as urea instead, increasing the government's fertiliser subsidy bill.

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