Why India's airlines keep importing their CEOs

QUESTION NOT ABOUT INDIVIDUAL CAPABILITY, BUT ABOUT STRUCTURE

- YARUQHULLAH KHAN

REPORTS THAT TATA Sons is scouting for a successor to Campbell Wilson at Air India have once again drawn attention to a familiar pattern in Indian aviation: the industry’s biggest airlines continue to turn to expatriate leaders even as India produces world-class executives across most other sectors.

Group chairman N Chandrasekaran, according to industry chatter, has approached senior executives at leading British and American carriers for the top job at India’s second-largest airline.

The question this raises is not about individual capability, but about structure. Why do Indian carriers repeatedly look overseas for leadership, long after liberalisation and decades into the industry’s growth?

The roots of this dependence lie in how Indian aviation evolved. After the government nationalised the sector in 1953, creating Air India and Indian Airlines as state monopolies, the industry spent four decades under bureaucratic control.

Decision-making was slow, political interference was routine and staffing levels ballooned. By the late 1980s, Air India had become a textbook case of how state control erodes competitiveness — burdened with debt, ageing aircraft and limited commercial agility.