Ready For Take - Off

Sourav Sinha has a knack of being at the heart of airlines’ transformational growth periods. Oman Air’s senior vice president of IT has already notched up a series of transformational projects at the Muscat firm, and is looking to ensure that technology remains at the heart of the company’s operations in years to come.

“ I don’t follow the rules, that’s my problem.” Sourav Sinha has always been one to trust his instincts, and if results are anything to go by, he’s right to do so. Now committed to introducing technological change and to challenge his IT staff to “go outside of their boundaries”, his work has already yielded positive impact across the company in a number of key areas.

Sinha joined Oman Air in 2013, just as the airline was looking to reinvent itself. He had previously worked for Qatar Airways as group CIO, joining in 2004, and would go on to play a key role throughout the airline’s expansion in the coming years. “When I joined Qatar Airways in 2004, it had 34 aircraft in its fleet,” Sinha says. “By the time I left, it had 70.”

Oman Air has experienced a similar upturn in fortunes to that of Qatar Airways in Sinha’s tenure, with its fleet rising from “under 20” in 2009, to over 50 today. While that rise can’t be attributed to Sinha alone, the wheels of transformation that he has set in motion are more than in keeping with the overall growth. “There are a few things that we tried to improve when I first arrived,” he says. “The main things were changes in terms of our commercial activity, sales and routemap. The most important thing to achieve was to see where the airline’s gaps were.” In the midst of this, Oman Air’s IT was also due a makeover. “Technology had lagged behind until people begun to notice its inefficiencies,” he says. “The systems and processes were not sufficient to support the airline’s operations.”