On The Record: Air India CEO Campbell Wilson Exclusive | Transformation, Growth & Challenges | N18V

Well, goodness. I think the fact that everyone is here is a recognition that people already see the market potential and the growth and the future. Air India, it's true to say that there truly is an aura about India at the moment. And it's not just the privatization of Air India or the world record orders that ourselves and others in the ecosystem have made. It's the potential. It's already the third largest domestic travel market in the world by air, but it has a propensity to travel of one-fifth that of China. So the upside potential is absolutely enormous. From an international perspective, it's already a large market but very underserved by Indian airlines. And so the upside of the Indian airlines realizing a more normal market share is huge. Then there's the geographic opportunity of people not just traveling to and from India but traveling through India. It's amazing the number of people that fly over the top of India every single year and connect around the sides. Bringing that business to connect in India supports Indian jobs, Indian cabin crew, Indian ground handlers, Indian engineers, Indian tourism, connects Indian business. So really, this is an opportunity now to really center the world's gravity of aviation onto Indian soil.

I think it's very real. Obviously, as you mentioned, the airport infrastructure side with the concession and the development of very world-class terminals in a number of cities. The privatization of Air India got the monster out of the middle from an economic perspective and has opened up huge investment in fleet and capacity and all of the supporting infrastructure that the airline requires. We've seen improvement with things like DigiYatra. If we see that extended to the international market, it makes transit travel much more convenient and people coming into India able to have a much smoother experience. There's clearly a lot more that can be done. If we look at other competing hubs around the world, they've taken another step forward with respect to convenience and customer service. But the good news is that they have done it. It's an example for us to learn from, bring back, apply here, and there's no reason why India cannot enjoy the benefits thereof.

Well, look, the reality is it's very, very low at the moment. Air India, despite being 92 years old and carrying the national airline name, really only flies to 40-something destinations around the world – 42 at the moment. Countries with much smaller population bases fly to double or triple that number. India should be able to support well more than 100 non-stop destinations by Indian carriers. That then allows for connectivity between those flights. We have most recently started to restructure our network so that people traveling from Europe to Australia can connect within a couple of hours at Delhi. In the past, they used to take 12 or 18 hours to connect. As a consequence of these changes, we've seen the number of international connecting passengers go from basically zero to about 10% of our load in the last 3 years. For India, the great thing is that it's a nice-to-have, not a must-have. We're always going to have huge traffic to and from India. We can augment it with people transiting across India, which allows us to add more spokes to our network, more frequency, provide more choice for Indian travelers, and also provide more employment for Indian people and businesses. So the upside really is enormous because we're only scratching the surface at the moment.

Over the past 3 years, Air India has gone from less than 100 operating aircraft to more than 300. We've increased the international footprint by 25%. That was largely from aircraft that had already been manufactured that we were able to get at short notice. What we're now waiting for is the first of the 470 aircraft that we had purchased that are being manufactured for us to start being delivered in earnest. That is going to happen in 2026 and beyond. That is when the next step change in our expansion will take place, particularly internationally, because it will see a more than doubling of our widebody aircraft fleet from 70 to well over 140. That really will allow us to connect the far-flung destinations of the world – North America, Europe, Australasia, and more into the Middle East and Africa – and offer for the first time a true international network of density and breadth from India, and not just from Delhi obviously, from Mumbai, from Bangalore, and there are many other opportunities as well.

Well, I think relations have normalized a little bit between the US and China, so we don't see the opportunity quite so open as it might have been. Maybe that's a good thing for the world, not necessarily a good thing for us. But clearly, the pace of expansion is contingent on the speed of deliveries and whether they're line fit or made available from others. We continue to pursue all opportunities. We're always talking to the manufacturers about what might become available.

Yeah, so there has been improvement in the supply chain. There are many parts of the supply chain – seats, engines, fuselage components, other components on an aircraft. So I think we've seen improvement across the board in all of those areas. It does mean that the manufacturers are sounding more confident about the delivery dates that they've committed to. It's probably not going to be the case that they can bring them any earlier, but the likelihood of them being pushed later seems to be receding, which is good news.

Well, I don't think we've put an exact number to it, but we have 38 aircraft operating at the moment. We have 540-odd yet to be delivered. Most of those will come before the end of the decade. So clearly, there's going to be a significant expansion, a doubling or thereabouts.

No, but there are a lot of moving parts. For example, some of the airspace restrictions that we presently have to operate around mean that we can't carry a full passenger load on some of our non-stop flights. That has had an impact on the number of people we're able to uplift, which is completely independent of any concern about economics, immigration, or tariffs. So because there are so many moving parts, we can't isolate any one thing. But at this juncture, we don't think that there's been a significant impact on the underlying demand, in part because so many of the people we're carrying are visiting friends and relatives, and that typically is quite robust.

I think anytime there is uncertainty, we have to be concerned. It can be uncertainty across any number of dimensions. We operate in a business which in some respects is discretionary travel. People have a choice about where they travel to. The ease of travel in terms of visa and other dimensions is a factor in people's thinking. So anything that causes uncertainty means that we are monitoring closely.

Well, domestically, a number of airports were closed. 13 cities that Air India Group operated to, we had to cease operations. Unfortunately, that affected some 70-odd thousand people, nearly a thousand flights. We assisted people very quickly to get to their destinations as best we could. That was something completely beyond our control. On the international side, once the airspace was closed, we needed to take a different route, which meant longer flying times to Europe and to North America, and in some cases for North America, it meant having to make an en route refueling stop in order to reach the destination. We adjusted to that very quickly. I think we managed to minimize the disruption to customers quite well. Then very quickly, we looked at how to optimize the operation so that we could continue to operate the connectivity and the customer proposition that people had selected us for. Most of our flights now have been reinstated to non-stop, sometimes with a reduction in the payload we carry, whether it's the amount of cargo or a reduction in the number of seats.

It's very route specific and even depends on wind and weather conditions on a particular day, typically to North America. On some routes, it's zero; on some routes, as much as 20 or 30 seats. But the point is that we've been able to sustain non-stop service, which is the key reason people are flying us. On a couple of routes, we are taking an en route refueling stop, typically a very short stop of 45 to 60 minutes. Certainly much shorter than if you got off an aircraft, did a transit experience, and got on another one. So the elapsed time remains very competitive, but it's just not quite as convenient as before, a little frustrating for the consumer and for us, and it adds cost to the operation.

So, we haven't canceled any flights thus far. Depending on how things go and the extent to which wind conditions make flights more difficult to viably operate, we may take a few tactical cuts here and there, but the intention is to maintain the operation as robustly as we can.

Yes, we were asked to give a ballpark cost of what this would be for us, and so we provided a number. It is approximately 5,000 crores, upwards of 5,000 crores. We're obviously working to reduce the impact by whatever means we can, but yes, that's a ballpark figure if it were to continue for a year.

That was before my time, so I don't have those numbers off the top of my head. But yes, it is a significant cost.

No, I think just to be clear, we were asked to provide a ballpark cost of what the impact would be. We have had a number of discussions with government on how we might mitigate those costs to make travel more convenient for people, whether it be fuel taxes or other things that we can do that provide some mitigation. But we're not in any active negotiations or discussions with anyone. Obviously, the government is going to take the positions they'll take from a geopolitical perspective, and we'll adjust accordingly.

I think it's probably better that any such discussions happen behind closed doors and not through the media.

So there's been a fairly smooth transition to alternate providers. There hasn't been a disruption to us or our customers at the airports we serve. Transitions like this are never completely easy, but I think it's been very well handled in this case.

No, I think we quite categorically refuted that allegation. It's not our place to comment on business relationships such as that. The government will make their own call.

Well, we continue to have discussions with all of the airport operators, and we're very interested in these new airports being developed, not just in Navi Mumbai and Jewar. In the case of Navi Mumbai, it's probably the most imminent new opening, so we have been in discussions about what capacity we'll operate from there. It's a little more complex in our case because we are a hub operator. We bring people into an airport and disperse on the rest of our network. So we need to be careful which flights we might move from the existing airport to the new airport so we don't weaken the hub. But clearly, we want to be present in Navi Mumbai. It's a good airport, good geography. It will have its own catchment, so we'll be making some announcements to that effect relatively soon. In the case of Jewar, we think it's quite a different catchment. Again, we want to be present in that market, but it's probably going to be additions rather than any transfers from the Indira Gandhi International operation.