Jet Airways has been waiting for a new CEO for a while. The airline, after being part owned by Etihad, was going to be ran by Etihad-picked executives however that does not seem to work out for Jet Airways. There was a CEO change in 2013 as well before Cramer Ball filled in the shoes.
The job has been vacant for more than a year now, since the last CEO Cramer Ball resigned in December 2015 to go to Alitalia. This was followed by Whole Time Director Gaurang Shetty taking over the role of Acting CEO, and then by Amit Agarwal, who is the CFO of the airline.
Dube is currently a Senior VP at Delta, responsible for the Asia Pacific region, and has been an aviation professional for about 3 decades. He has been at Delta for over a decade now. Jet Airways has a commercial relationship with Delta/Air France/KLM & Virgin Atlantic, and chatter is there is also the discussion of a joint venture ongoing.
Bottomline
While Jet Airways’ had for a short while gone with Etihad Airways taking a large part of their decisions for them, it seems the centre of gravity has moved back to India, especially as support inside Etihad Airways for the Etihad partners strategy goes out of the window. It would be good to have a stable CEO at the airline which has a very stable management team overall, and have them move forward with new commercial choices they are currently perhaps not making.
They desperately need a new CEO who re-engineers the product and quality of Jet Airways. Flew yesterday DEL-London in Premier – champagne not chilled – bollinger tastes really bad – moved to gin n tonic – after being provided one Britvic tonic and soda they ran out of soda and guess what I was offerred instead for the next round- Lehar evervess soda in a plastic bottle which is available in a local mom and pop on the streets of India. To serve that in business class on a London flight which is their premium route is outrageous.
They have also not acquired any new aircrafts for years, they are not adding any new international destinations, nothing new. The whole brand is becoming stale. Mr Goyal you need a shakeup of your senior management team!