Transcript

You didn't inherit a startup, you got a legacy brand. Very proud history with a very mixed history as well. They were monkeys in the Air India head office in Connaught Place, the crew training centre in Mumbai. It was infested with snakes. May 2028 will be a world class airline. Are we world class? Every single time? No. Looking good. Alright, laps. Also sorry, hold one second. Ready, cheese. Aircraft. With the cut take upgrades A5 year plan to go from struggling to world class. But can Air India actually pull it off? Yep. Ashkani Jewish mammoth aviation transformation cover karegi. Let's kick it off with the conversation with the CEO of Air India, Mr. Campbell Wilson. Campbell, good morning. How are you doing? Very good, Sir. Nice to see you. Nice to see you too. You didn't inherit a startup, you got a legacy brand. I mean it's a mammoth of an airline that we've loved. I've grown up looking at how is it working around from that day to where we've come. It's sort of been incredibly busy four years. This last four years has been focused on the turnaround of a 92 year old legacy airline that carried a very famous name, a very proud history with a very mixed history as well, periods in which it was amongst the best in the world and periods. In which it was clearly very not. Yep, it's been a journey that's involved at current times about 25,000 and 500 people. And I think over the last four years, there's been significant progress with more to come. Can you take us through some anecdotes, what you saw? I heard you went on ground and visited a lot of offices yourself as well. Well, Air India had been challenged for cash for some decades and that was reflected across the organization, for example, as many of the premises that the organization was operating from were, were quite decrepit. The crew training centre in Mumbai was infested with snakes, nor there were monkeys in the the, the Air India head office in Connaught Place. There's also because it was a public sector company, there wasn't the performance management practices of a of a private organization. Technology hadn't been upgraded. So most people to the extent they used e-mail, were using Gmail because the company will e-mail system was so bad. And so that was the, the organization that we inherited in 2022. When I was first employed, I was asked how long. That would take, and I said it'll take five to seven years. Yeah, I think the reality is that it will take five to seven years. Most of the heavy lifting has been done now, but there is a long tail of things that need to be completed such as the reconfiguration of some of the legacy wide body aircraft which is contingent on seat supply and certification. That process has started. I do. But you're doing all of this while also being in operation while being in operation while doing a complete transfusion of systems and processes and culture and. People. We also merged 4 airlines into two. During this same period, we took delivery of more than 100 new aircraft into the fleet. Complete rebranding. Uplifting of product. Uplifting of service levels. Uplifting of training. Building a training Academy. Building a flat simulator center. Building a flying skill. Building a maintenance and repair base. There's been many, many balls being juggled in the air. Could you explain to us or why it takes so long? Because we thought as soon as the Tata Group took over, it will be immediate. But what are the kind of hurdles that you'll have faced? Well, I think let's focus on the aircraft interiors because I think that's what people see. We negotiated and placed an order for new aircraft at that . 470 new aircraft, which we've now increased by the way, to 600 new aircraft we placed. Order in 2022. The first wide body aircraft from that order got delivered in 2026. Ohh damn. The first narrow body aircraft from that order got delivered in 2026. That's how long it takes to manufacture an aircraft and design and procure and certify seats in today's post COVID environment. It will get better over the course of the next few years as the whole industry catches up with with the the backlog of both of these. But when you talk about a transformation that big, what sort of an investment goes behind it and how many touch points does it transform? Investment in this is absolutely huge. And we're talking about 600 aircraft in list price. We're talking seventy, $80 billion U.S. dollars in terms of their fleet modernization and the seats and interiors of the existing aircraft. That's more than 400 million U.S. dollars. The the IT infrastructure investment is a couple of $100 million establishing the training. Academy flying school maintenance base simulated facilities is another pickup of 10s of millions of dollars. You know, there there's a huge investment in this and I think that just signifies the commitment that the shareholders have to, to turning your into your around. Then you said you listened to the customers, but in the beginning we, we really knew that there were some fundamental things that irrespective of asking customers, we knew we needed to fix aircraft reliability, interior quality seats and inflate entertainment. F&B service level website and electronic tools that people can use to either self server or or get information. Now we've achieved a certain level, we do want to engage much more with the customer to understand what next. We're now talking about building us to be as good as a world class LA. It's easier said than done. So you say by 2028 will be a world class airline. I think in areas now we are already world class. I think if you look at the app for example, that's. One awards, it's been adjudged either the best or amongst the two or three best. I think if you look at our a 350 aircraft that currently serves New York and London, the NPS on that is as good as any top tier airline in the world. The way we've been appraised by global rating organizations, the most improved airline in the world over the past 18 months already a judge to force their airline which is at the moment where we aspired to be going to five star will require a bit more consistency and structure. We need to build upon, we wanted to have a ground experience for people to to start their journey in in the right frame of mind. Yeah. The first example of this is in Delhi, that international lounge, which is the first one that has been again designed by and for the new Air India, where we following this up with a new similar lounge in San Francisco in a few weeks time. And then over the course of time, we'll be rolling out a similar standard lounge across many of the key airports in the world. Are we world class in every single aircraft, every single time? No, we're working towards that. And ultimately it's that consistency of product proposition and customer experience that will truly determine when we're world class. And I think we're working towards that over the next couple of years. There's also advanced safety and service training mechanisms that have been put into place that was very imperative as well. Every sort of training has been reimagined and, and, and invested in and put in place. And all of our staff go through this the the training Academy that we established, which is. The largest in South Asia sees 2200 people go through a day for whether it's safety or service or other capability training. I think we need a cricketing analogy to understand why it takes so long to do the transformation. Would you have one? Well, I think we, we got a very difficult wicket to begin with. A lot of twists and turns and curves and, and, and uneven bounce. We've played through I think the first couple of sessions and that we're more than halfway through. We've gone through the sessions. It's like a Test match. Is it? Ohh, of course it's a Test match. Absolutely. I think we've said repeatedly that this is not a T20, it's a Test match. Strategy is one thing, but execution is where the real magic happens. I'm meeting the leadership now who's going to be behind this transformation and understand how you and I get to experience this change, which is in the air and on the ground.