A number of management changes brought about by the November 12 merger of Air India and Vistara were disclosed by the Air India Group on Friday. Vistara CEO Vinod Kannan, who has also served as the chief integration officer for the merging of the full-service airlines, will remain in that capacity after the merger. Having spent more than two decades with Singapore Airlines, Kannan will serve on the management committee and answer directly to Campbell Wilson, the CEO of Air India.
Vistara’s chief commercial officer, Deepak Rajawat, will report to CEO Aloke Singh as the new CFO of the expanded Air India Express. Additionally, he will assist group CFO Sanjay Sharma with strategic projects and initiatives. Air India Express’s current CFO, Vikas Agarwal, will take on a new position within the airline.
While Pushpinder Singh, the chief operations officer of Air India Express, resumes flying, Hamish Maxwell, senior vice-president-flight operations of Vistara, has taken on an advising role to Aloke Singh. Singh’s replacement will be revealed when the time is right. Vistara’s chief information officer and senior vice-president of human resources and corporate affairs, Deepa Chadha and Vinod Bhatt, will assume key positions at other Tata group companies.
At the conclusion of his current tenure, Vistara CFO Niyant Maru, who stayed on over his superannuation date to see the merger through to completion, will retire. According to a statement released by the Air India Group on Friday, all other CXO and reporting line positions are still in place. “In the context of dramatic growth and wholesale transformation, the four Tata airlines have worked hard over the past two years to prepare for and execute one of the most complex mergers in aviation history, consolidating from four airlines to two,” Wilson stated.
Wilson continued, “We are excited to formally establish a group leadership made up of colleagues from all four predecessor airlines to guide the next stage of our journey as we now approach the end of that process.” The government authorised Singapore Airlines’ $360 million investment in August of this year, opening the door for Vistara and Air India to unite. The Singaporean airline, which owned 49% of the business that operated Vistara, will own 25.1% of the combined company as a result of the merger, which has been in the works for more than a year.
