Running an airline is a tough gig. Running Air India right now is tougher.
That is the job Tewolde Gebremariam just took. Air India announced on August 5, 2026 that the former boss of Ethiopian Airlines will take the top job, replacing Campbell Wilson.
Gebremariam arrives after a rough stretch for the Tata Group-owned airline. Wilson left that post in April, right after the carrier reported a record loss for the fiscal year ended March 31.
That loss did not come out of nowhere. A Dreamliner crash in June last year claimed more than 240 lives, and airlines were forced to take longer, pricier detours after India and Pakistan clashed in May.
Add in Middle East hostilities, and fuel bills went up. Even with big plans to expand its fleet, Air India's yields and its service quality have fallen short of targets.
In 2022, Tata, the country's largest business group, took over Air India from the government. The choice of Gebremariam shows Tata wanted someone who has turned an airline around during a painful rebuilding period.
Gebremariam is not new to big carriers. Over more than a decade at Ethiopian Airlines, he led what Air India calls a multibillion-dollar growth spurt, with revenue up more than fourfold and fleet size up nearly threefold.
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The company became Africa's biggest and most profitable airline on his watch. But his record has a painful chapter too.
In 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing crash killed all 157 people on board while he was in charge.
Tata's chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said in a statement: "Tewolde's track record in building one of the world's most efficient and profitable airline groups makes him uniquely suited to lead Air India." Air India's statement called him a leader with the vital expertise the airline needs now.
Kapil Kaul of CAPA India called the appointment an "excellent decision," while saying that Air India's new chief would need strong backing to fix the carrier. Such backing will matter, because the problems ahead are enormous.
The first to-do list is short and steep. He must shore up overseas flights, slow the cash drain, and deal with route shifts caused by regional fighting.
Industry conditions are not helping. Because of last year's border clash between India and Pakistan, along with the Iran conflict, airlines based in India have had to take lengthier and pricier paths to foreign airports. The Middle East conflict has also pushed up fuel expenses, squeezing airline margins. All of this makes for one of the toughest operating environments the industry has seen in years.
Tata began its search for a CEO earlier in the year; in January, Bloomberg News reported that Chandrasekaran had talked with possible candidates because the group was frustrated by Air India's slow recovery.
Wilson had been moving Air India toward profitability with a long transformation drive, but the Dreamliner crash and the conflict undid years of progress. Under his watch, four airline brands became two - Vistara into Air India and AirAsia India into low-cost Air India Express.
Competition is moving too, with IndiGo, India's largest carrier, naming veteran Willie Walsh as its CEO a month before this announcement.
Air India's problems are not only India's problem. Singapore Airlines owns 25.1% of the carrier, so those losses drag on Singapore Airlines' earnings.
These are not just airline problems.
Gebremariam has led one airline to enormous growth, and he has lived through aviation's worst moments. Tata is betting he can do it again at Air India.
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