Indian Aviation’s Biggest CEO Shake-Up

In 17 years of covering Indian Aviation, I watched airlines collapse overnight. bureaucrats decide the fate of billion dollar businesses, pilots become heroes and executives tainted beyond recognition. But I cannot remember a single month when the CEOs of India's two largest airlines walked out of the door at the same time. Peter Elbers left Indigo on March 10th, 2026. He'd been leading the airline for three years, yet his resignation was accepted with immediate effect and his notice period waived. Three weeks later, Campbell Wilson announced his departure from Air India. Both experts both brought into steer transformations, both gone. But here's where the similarity ends. Elbers was pushed after an unprecedented operational meltdown in December 2025. Over 4000 flights cancelled in 9 days. 300,000 passengers stranded. A 20 crore rupees DGCA fine and profits that collapse 78%. One of this made his position completely untenable. By many accounts, Peter Elbers fell on his sword so that others wouldn't have to pick it up. Wilson's story is different. His tint was as challenging as Elbers had been unhindered. Here's my colleague and ET's aviation tracker are in the Majundar. Peter Elbers came to a company which was well settled, leadership well well defined and his assignment was to take it long haul to build up on an established base which was already there. For Campbell Wilson, it was a completely different game altogether. It's as he has been mentioning in many of his interviews the toughest aviation job in the world. A broken airline under-invested with a government for decades, the Tata's took it over. A huge assignment, lot of public clear. What do you do and what you don't do is undersciting in daily. For me the challenge for Campbell was much much higher than Peter Elbers. But Wilson's exit was more dignified. He had told the Tata chairman, S. Chandrasekaran, as far back as 2024 that he wanted to go. A planned exit, a quieter one, but no less significant. Now Indigo has already named a successor, Willy Walsh, one of the hardest men in global aviation. Air India is still searching. In this episode we break down what led to these exits, where both airlines stand and what comes next. It's Tuesday the 14th of April, I'm Anirban Chaudhary, this is the morning brief. So, you know, when Peter Elbers was brought into Indigo, it was a highlight for the company. The promoter worked with him very, very closely or convincing him to join the airline. He was already a very, very well accomplished chief executive in global aviation. Yes, this was a man who had started his career loading bags on the map of Amsterdam Shefall in 1992 and then had gone to become Dutch carrier KLM's most successful CEO, turning it from a financially strained airline into a record breaker. While handling massive challenges in its integration with Air France, read absolutely wild labour union issues among other things. So obviously, for him to come and take the mantle of Indigo, it was a big headline point and I think the shareholders really, really appreciated that. And if you see Peter's journey in Indigo, it has been quite unhindered. It was a kind of monopoly run for Indigo because Spijjet has shrunk. Goair had kind of disappeared ultimately before declaring bankruptcy and Air India was in a complete building stage. Then I think in the interview that I did of him that was I think a month after his official joining, he clearly said that his assignment from promoter Rahul Bharti was to take it long haul to venture into new geographies for the airline. And he delivered the airline crossed 80,000 crore rupees in annual revenue, placed a historic 500 aircraft Airbus order and launched flights to Manchester, Amsterdam, London and Copenhagen. Having said that if you have to run a successful company, you have to be kind of autocratic too. A democracy has no place in a boardroom. Peter, he had a mind of his own. He did not shy away from stamping his authority and in many, many cases, it was like my way or the highway. And we saw that in many leadership changes, he picked up young executives and made them departmental heads. In some cases, it also led to the outster of the older employees who were there with the company for decades. But his highway was smooth, super smooth. The promoter was happy, the shareholders were happy and the share price showed it. Then came December 2025. New FDT alarms, more simply pilot rest regulations had come into effect. Indigo, in a pattern that investigators called overoptimization, had built flights schedules with almost no buffer for crew. The system had never been stress tested. On December 3rd, a disruption in one city was all it took for the chain to break. By December 5th, Indigo's on-time performance hit the worst in its history. Between December 1st and 9th, it cancelled 4,290 flights. Passengers slept on airport floors. The government was livid. The DGCA, India's aviation regulator, fined the airline and issued show-cost notices to Elbers personally. On more reason, I believe what went against Peter is that the chief executive, Peter Elbers, chief operating officer, Isidre, and one more senior expert executive, all three were out of town when the Indigo chaos broke down. The government had no direct line with the CXOs and I think that is one thing which went against Peter Elbers in his outster. And Indigo had ordered an internal investigation. So I believe the internal investigation, the ultimate buck fell on the CEO and I think when that investigation report came out, I think Peter saw the writing on the world. Campbell Wilson's story is different in almost every way. Wilson is a New Zealand aviation veteran who spent over 25 years at Singapore Airlines, including as founding CEO of its subsidiary Scoot. Then he was brought in to lead Air India's post privatization turnaround as CEO in 2022. It was as Arindham put it, the toughest aviation job in the world. An airline just out of government control, perennially under-invested, exploited, leading with massive legacy issues, accounting for the biggest chunk of the industry's losses, and now a matter of prestige for one of the most respected conglomerates in the country. Wilson launched a five-year transformation plan. He rebranded the airline. The airline had ordered 470 new aircraft and he had the unenviable task of transforming refurbishing its fleet. He merged Vistara. He rebuilt the leadership team. In fact, he did more in four years than most CEOs would attempt in ten. Here's Arindham. Campbell, since he came into charge in 2022, I believe he has always worked with one of his hand-stied behind his back. It was a broken house from that position to have a functional corporate authority now where the divisions are very, very much clear, where you have clear distinction between departments, where you have modern softwares, where there is a kind of certainty in path how his aircraft induction is going to be. I think Campbell has achieved a lot. It's definitely a better company than what he was pre-privatized in. But again, his hard-ealth were very, very kind of things that were not in his control. Arindy's main problem is his fleet. The engineering problem, the customer satisfaction problem that it gets boggled with daily comes from the age of his fleet, in which investment where the government was next to negligible. And when Campbell took charge, that was the key to the transformation, transform your fleet as soon as possible, either refurbish or get new planes in. Both of these two task were hamstrung. There was a global supply chain problem which has gone from bad to worse. Leave aside new planes delivery by air bus and Boeing. Even getting a new seat belt, the waiting time increased from 10 days to a humongous 100 days. So that project kept on getting postponed and postponed. And I think that defined the public optics of air India under the Tata's. People really expected a kind of magic wand that there will be improvement instantly. And that was not to be the case. And I think Campbell suffered from that over expectation and failed you to deliver for measures and reasons, some of which were definitely not in his control. And so, there's still little to show in the airlines financial numbers. Aeronautia and its subsidiary Aeronautia Express posted a loss of 9808 crore rupees in F525 with losses expected to worsen in the current year. What will also continue to haunt Wilson is June 12th 2025. A Boeing 787/8 Dreamliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Amdabad killing 260 people. It was the deadliest aviation disaster of the decade. Regulatory scrutiny intensified. Pakistan closed its airspace to Indian carriers. The Middle East conflict rerouted and disrupted long haul operations. The weight became unbearable and one of the likely reasons of his exit. If we look at the two CEO trajectories, it was hubris and hatchet in one case, heritage and headwinds on the other. But if there's one common challenge between the two, it's the one of running a company that is closely controlled by its founder in a sector that is in a constant stranglehold by the government. Here's John Strickland, a global aviation expert and founder of JLS Consulting. I think from what I've seen around the airline industry, any business that is, founder created and founder still involved can be challenging. When we think about these two situations of Air India going back to Tata family from where its origins came or role battier in India, it makes me think here in Europe when EasyJet was born. Only had a young Greek separate entrepreneur, Stelios Hadjian who founded our airline over the years and I think it's something he acknowledged who was an entrepreneur. He'd like to start new things and have an excitement then would get a bit bored. And so as EasyJet got bigger and was having to invest in fleet growth, he became the bane of management's life, a major shareholder in constantly chipping in with his view about the way they were running the business and threatening to fire directors, indeed I think an number of directors were fired at his behest. But that's just an illustration of what could happen. So I think it is maybe different to simply a market focused, market accountable business where perhaps processes and expectations are more standardized around typical business metrics because you're dealing with personalities and at the end of the day people leading with business on the hands on, CEO type role have to be able to get on with those people. Now let's quickly look at where the airlines stand today. Despite the December meltdown, Indigo's fundamentals remain formidable. The aircraft operates a fleet of 440 aircraft, largest in India, serving 94 domestic and 43 international destinations running over 2700 flights daily. Its full year FY25 profit came in at 7258 crore, although down 11% from the previous year. Air India currently operates a fleet of 191 aircraft, the airline has a significant aircraft order, a combination of Airbus and Boeing jets that will eventually transform its operations, revenue grew 13% in FY25, but losses as I said remain brutal. Also, the June 2025 crash has cast a long shadow over safety perceptions and regulatory relations. And both Air India and Air India Express are now without permanent CEOs, a leadership vacuum that the Tata's cannot afford to let drag. Here's Arundam. I don't think the party is clear in any way so now and that's one thing the promoter company, the Tata's should take care of. As you know, the economic times broke that story in January that the Tata's was looking for a replacement of Campbell Wilson and the ultimate public announcement came last week. I think the public announcement was also a reason because Mr Wilson wanted to set a deadline for Tata's to get his replacement. There here it is, I have officially put in my resignation. My notice period runs up to September. Please get a successor in between this period so that I can hand over and leave. Having said that Tata's has his own management problem, Mr Chandrasekharan's next annual is up for as the economic times reported. It's not a smooth house, a smooth order for him to get the next term. I think that has taken up a lot of space, mind space and functional space of Tata's and that's what has delayed the CEO's, CEO's announcement. And that is one lack you know that Tata's should feel up as soon as possible. A India at current stage cannot have an interim CEO after which one gets a permanent CEO. This question of who takes after Campbell Wilson needs to be answered as fast as possible. And I think Tata's don't have an answer to this as of today. Indigo at least has an answer. Willie Warch. The former CEO of AirLingas, British Airways and IAG, the man who spent two decades almost reshaping European aviation will take charge in August 2026. Warch is in many ways anti-Albers, where Elbers was the visionary, Warch is the surgeon. The ruthless taskmaster, the cost assassin is John. Yeah, you're right to say Willie is a tough taskmaster and I am sure that is what has been looked at in coming to the decision to recruit him to replace Peter. It's worth commenting that Willie Warch himself is someone who has long admired India and held it up as a shiny example of growth and dynamism in the 21st century aviation world. He has visited Indigo before he and Peter are friends and again Willie would have spoken and has spoken highly publicly in the past of Peter as one of the best global aviation leaders. But his history from first of all, bigger pilot, I think that's an interesting point. You see very few airline leaders who have moved successfully from an operational role, particularly being a pilot, but Willie came from being a pilot at Lingas for National Irish Airline, then ran that airline, then fell out with the government in Ireland about getting it completely privatized and left and ended up heading up British Airways, which I would say is where, as you said, this kind of hard-nosed approach. He dragged British Airways because they screaming into the 21st century. He had hard-bitten experience of competing directly with Ryanair, the real toughest, most aggressive Locust airline in Europe, side by side of their Lingas, and then was, of course, the founding CEO of IAG, one of the key bits of consolidation in European aviation, which was initially a fusion of British Airways and the Spanish Airline Iberia. But he's over the years been seen as the hard man, as you say. There was one year in his tenure at British Airways, there were cabin crew strikes, which persisted. That was the year, all about cost-cutting in terms of conditions and productivity. And Willie just took that on. The airline was being grounded on a periodic basis by the strikes, but he grounded the airline on the couple of occasions. He took the airline out of business a couple of days and said, "Look, it's not you, the union who decides if we fly or not. It's me. I will decide. I'm going to cancel today." And he won a victory in that battle. And he's someone who, I've met him on a number of occasions. He will speak as he finds, he will tell, "Maybe the impalatable truth." And that's a strength. It's a difficult thing to hear for staff or people who don't want to go along that message, but certainly he would not sweeten the pill in delivering tough messages. So I think looking at what we said about the meltdown of Indigo, I think that's one of the key reasons why he is seen as the hope to get Indigo back to the pedestal it was on in terms of reputation and operational performance. Have you called him a sort of a visionary in terms of expanding and growing an airline to huge scale? Or would you call him someone who's an expert at setting the house in order? Or is it a mix of both? I think it's a mix of both because the work-asians, but there was a time when British Airways moved into its new then new terminal at Heathrow Airport in London, terminal five. And the first day was a nightmare. It just melted down. Now if you draw a parallel with a meltdown we talked about with Indigo and Peter falling on his sword. Willie, I remember being asked myself as an industry analyst, oh it should the CEO be fired. And I remember answering, well, shouldn't you give a CEO a chance to show you can put it right. And that's what happened. They really did turn it around. So yes, he's going to be there to get the house in order and make sure that as the airline grows it doesn't have growing pains. But it shouldn't be a case of you ad fleet, you ad routes, but you can't cope. You'll certainly be having a close watch on that and that operational experience will pay off. But I think we see the airlines not only growing now, but this massive order book coming for more Airbus 320s, the 60 or so A350s for rolling out Longhorn and remembering Peter Elbers brought in these European routes, which was new for Indigo. Willie's overseen growth in British Airways and the development of IAG. IAG was a big, a positive group or is a big, a positive group in Europe. And that was what he said. I want to be part of consolidation, buying other airlines as they fit. This is different. This is more organic growth. He's not somebody there looking for a glamorous ride of growth of sake of growth. He will be looking all the time. Is this right? Is it working operation? Is it working financially? Does it make sense for us to do these flights? by adding to. profit for the long term for indigo. If he doesn't believe that, or he thinks for a way to improve efficiency to increase profitability in areas that maybe it's lacking, he won't be shy in looking to find such ways and implement them. Here's how Arindam sees Worldsh's appointment. The mandate for Willy Walsh, I think, on urban is a sign of continuity. Willy Walsh will get the same kind of leg up or same kind of huge benefit that Peter Lvers got when he took charge. The competitive scenario is vastly, vastly in indigo's favor for it to lead to any kind of immediate challenge. It has a plan to hire a thousand pilots in the next one year. The utilization of the aircraft per pilot, which was a key point in leading to December's disaster. Those are already being corrected now. So when Willy Walsh takes charge in August, it will be a very, very kind of clean slate. The December's ghost, I don't think, will chase Willy Walsh. The mandate for him is equally clear. The Long Hall ambition is not going anywhere. Two days back, Willy Walsh, as the IATC or the chair he holds now spoke to BBC and he said that India's minuscule number of white bodies is a shame considering the countryside. IAG, where he functionally, was completely a board run company. He had the mandate from the board to slash cost and all. The assignments are very, very quite different. Indigo has been a very, very cost effective airline from day one. I don't think there is much more scope for Willy. Indigo is one of the companies in the Indian listed space where a lot of foreign institutional investors are invested. They need a face. They need someone who as the head of the company who has run bigger companies before, was globally respected. Willy's selection fits into that gap to show that ambition of Indigo to become a blue chip global airline is not going anywhere. It's a process of continuity and shareholder should take a kind of satisfaction in that fact. It said that airlines reinvent themselves roughly every two decades. Strategy, fleets, leadership, culture. For Air India, this is the fourth such cycle for Indigo, the first real one. Same industry cycle, very different stages. The outcomes as always will be interesting. That's it for today. You were listening to this episode on the morning brief. It was produced by me and Vinay Joshi, sound designed by Amrit Redji. 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