India’s aviation industry collectively decided this was the week to hit reset.
Willie Walsh had been running IndiGo for exactly two days when Air India announced its own new boss — former Ethiopian Airline CEO Tewolde Gebremariam.
The two hires couldn’t be more different, which says a lot about what each airline thinks its real problem is. Gebremariam spent years turning Ethiopian Airlines into one of Africa’s few genuinely profitable carriers. Impressive — but he’s now inheriting an airline that lost over $2 billion last year and remains under scrutiny after a fatal crash.
Walsh, meanwhile, spent decades building airline alliances in Europe. His job at IndiGo is to make a budget carrier look long-haul credible, just as it cuts international routes instead of adding them.
Neither is starting from scratch. The planes are ordered — over 1,500 between the two airlines. The market is there. India still wants to be the next big connecting hub between East and West. What’s missing is something less glamorous: getting the planes, the crews, and the money to cooperate at the same time.
So welcome aboard, gentlemen. Fasten your seatbelts. Turbulence isn’t just expected, it’s part of the job.
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