When nearly 300 lives were lost in a fiery crash outside Ahmedabad earlier this month, the future of Air India – and faith in Indian aviation itself – was thrown into turmoil.
Now, Tata Group’s chairman has assumed direct command of the embattled airline’s day-to-day operations, determined to chart a path out of the crisis following one of modern aviation’s deadliest disasters.
On June 17, just five days after the crash, Natarajan Chandrasekaran stood before 700 sombre Air India employees in New Delhi. The gravity of the moment was unmistakable.
“I’ve seen a reasonable number of crises in my career, but this is the most heartbreaking one,” he said. “We need to use this incident as an act of force to build a safer airline.”
For Chandrasekaran – whose reputation as a crisis-tested leader was forged during his tenure at India’s largest IT services firm, Tata Consultancy Services – the challenge is immense. Tata reacquired Air India in 2022, vowing to restore its faded lustre and transform it into a world-class carrier. But that vision is now in jeopardy.
The June 12 crash in Ahmedabad, one of the worst aviation disasters in recent memory, has cast a pall over Air India’s transformation plans. While investigators have yet to pinpoint the cause, the tragedy has prompted searching questions about safety oversight in a rapidly expanding aviation sector.
