GoAir Appoints Vinay Dube as CEO; Praveen Iyer as CCO

GoAir has been waiting for a new CEO for a while. The airline has not exactly been the best placed to retain executive talent, with people walking in and walking out of the airline every few months. This time, there was a long wait before the airline appointed new executives. The airline had last appointed a senior executive in Miranda Mills, who had moved from Airbus, as its COO in 2019.

Vinay Dube was the CEO of Jet Airways and had moved on from the airline in about May 2019 after the airline was grounded for good (we still can’t call it dead as the process to resurrect it continues). He was associated with GoAir as an advisor since October 2019 onwards. In his earlier assignments, Vinay has held the position of Senior Vice President-Asia Pacific at Delta Air Lines, Inc., Chief Executive Officer at Delta Technology LLC, Vice President-Consulting & Marketing Solutions at Sabre Airline Solutions and Manager-Network Forecasting Systems at American Airlines, Inc.

In close succession to the appointment of Vinay Dube, GoAir has also brought along Praveen Iyer as the Chief Commercial Officer. Praveen Iyer was the CCO of Jet Airways, and worked at 9W for 14 years, and had then moved to VFS Global as the COO. In his career at Jet Airways, Praveen was responsible for Planning, Distribution, Pricing, Revenue Management, Ancillary and Sales. He has also led teams in developing new market segmentation, implementing new customer acquisition strategies and forming global alliances and partnerships. These will be his responsibilities at GoAir as well.

Bottomline

It is nice to see GoAir finally putting together a full management team. Although the airline shares the promoter-driven DNA with Jet Airways, so I hope these professionals get an open hand to work with rather than just being around. One can also sense that GoAir is preparing for an IPO, and this move could be in preparation for the IPO. It would be good to have a stable CEO at the airline and have GoAir move forward with new commercial choices they are currently perhaps not making.