Ashwani Lohani to take over as Air India chief today

NEW DELHI: Ashwani Lohani, a 1980 batch Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers officer, will take over as Air India chairman and managing director on Monday. AI's outgoing CMD Rohit Nandan, a senior IAS officer, will hand over charge to Lohani and take over as secretary skill development ministry.
Lohani, a turnaround specialist who is coming from Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corp, is taking over at a time when AI pilots are up in arms and are holding a secret ballot to decide on striking work.
While the pilot issue could be Lohani's first challenge at AI, the airline is facing a serious financial crisis. It is surviving on a Rs 30,000 crore bailout package, more than half of which has already been infused into it. It is likely to post a loss of Rs 3,900 crore for the year ended 31 March 2014. It lost Rs 5,100 crore in 2012-13 and Rs 7,100 crore in the preceding fiscal. The airline’s combined working capital and aircraft loan is Rs 42,500 crore, and it has dues to vendors like oil and airport companies of another Rs 4,000 crore.
The onus for turning around AI lies on two men handpicked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- aviation secretary R N Choubey who was brought in recently as the aviation ministry had nothing to show off in terms of achievements in the first year of NDA-II, and Lohani.
Interestingly, the skill development ministry is seen as virtually a shadow aviation ministry. Headed by Rajiv Pratap Rudy, an Airbus A320 pilot who has flown IndiGo aircraft and may now fly AI planes, the skill development ministry's outgoing secretary Sunil Arora used to head erstwhile Indian Airlines over a decade back. And the new secretary, Rohit Nandan, has been at helm of the merged AI-IA entity for just over four years.
Lohani is a railway engineer credited with restoring the world’s oldest working steam locomotive for running the Fairy Queen between Delhi and Alwar now has the unenviable task of reviving Air India.
Lohani’s blog lists “turning around sick corporations” among his main interests. Far from sick, AI is a critically ill organization and will need all the expertise he can bring to the job.