Thank you very much, Mr. Wilson, for joining me on this edition of Frankly Speaking. Air India, it's been a tumultuous journey so far, but you're currently undergoing a massive transformation post-privatization. One of the most significant milestones in this journey has been the merger of Air India with Vistara and getting all your ducks in a row. I want to ask you: this consolidation has created a larger Air India group with an expanded network. Could you walk us through the opportunities as well as the challenges of this merger?
Oh goodness. The opportunity was that we had very, very different airlines in the portfolio. We had four airlines in the portfolio starting Air India, a 92-year-old airline with a storied history, gone through some ups and downs, different ownership changes, in a position where it was starting to transform, but coming from a difficult place. We had Vistara, which was a young airline started just 10 years ago, which had the benefit of all the modern technologies and contemporary learnings. We had Air India Express, which was a little bit more like Air India, albeit younger, and we had AirAsia India, which was newer and more contemporary from a low-cost airline perspective. So bringing all four of those airlines together allowed us, a, to create scale, but b, to pick the best practices from each of those airlines: the history, the warmth, the service, the technology, the business practices, and put into the operating system of the new Air India group the best of what existed in the preceding four airlines. We were able to accelerate the transformation of Air India by bringing in a newer fleet of aircraft, bringing in systems and practices that had been prevalent in Vistara. We've been able to scale Air India Express, which hitherto was 25 aircraft, now operating with over a hundred. And so it allowed us to effectively make a step change in the transformation. It looks like overnight, but it was the result of two years of very, very hard work.
You didn't mention the challenges. Were there challenges on the way, or do you want me to forget about that question?
Well, I wouldn't say challenges. This was probably the most complex airline merger ever done because it involved four airlines coming together. It was also done in very rapid time. Airline mergers in other parts of the world have taken five to eight years. This was done in a little over two. You're talking about hundreds of aircraft having to be transferred—not just the transfer of the financial asset, but the transfer of the regulated asset, all of the operating permits and other documentation that is associated with an aircraft. You're talking about the merger of 30,000 people across the group and the fitment of those people into an organization structure and into roles that people feel befit their expertise and allow them to flourish to their best. We've got the consolidation of 63 physical premises around the country coming into one location where everyone is operating together under one roof. Clearly, there's a cultural element from such very, very different organizations to come together, to accept each other, to work together, and to work harmoniously towards a shared goal. I could go on and on and on about the number of documents and contracts and people and places and aircraft that were involved in this process. It was hugely complex, but I think it's a real testament to the team, but also a testament to the regulator and to India that we've been able to pull off such a significant and unprecedented merger quite so quickly and, if I may say, quite so smoothly.
Absolutely. But the aviation sector in India is in a paradoxical situation: air traffic increasing, number of passengers increasing, yet profitability not quite there, viability of several companies in the dock, companies come and go, airlines come and fold up. We have these problems, and in fact, the latest ICRA report says there is 20 to 30 billion rupees worth of net losses that will be reported in the current financial year. How do you look at this paradox that exists?
Well, I think if we look at the structure of the industry, at least until Air India's privatization, there was a very substantial player in the middle that was under government ownership. And it had suffered from a lack of investment for many years, and also didn't operate with a particularly strong profit motive; it existed to serve other purposes. So when you've got such a large piece of the aviation landscape operating in such a fashion, it's very difficult for the rest of the ecosystem to plan ahead, to make money with the investments that they're making, or even have the confidence to make such investments in the first place. So by putting Air India into private hands, it removed that impediment. It allowed for not just Air India, but the industry in general to have the confidence to invest more in new aircraft. And India has a massive order book now as a consequence because of the clarity of strategic objective. It allows airports to invest with more confidence in the future and the customer experience that the airlines are now more clear that they want. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling and self-supporting cycle. We're very early in that journey because Air India has only been privatized for a little over three years, and during that three years, we've been merging and doing other transformative things. But I think the direction is looking good, and I think India is now in a position where its aviation ecosystem can start taking on the best in the world and actually delivering the potential that it has long had. And the fact that the IATA AGM is now in India, I think, is testament to the fact that there is an air about India now in the aviation context, and that people see the opportunity, they see the growth, they're interested in what's happening, and they want to be part of it.
So you talk about "there is an air about India" that you just mentioned, and that's your new campaign as well. India has been in a situation where it's ready to take off. We've just beaten the Japanese economy to be the number four economy in the world, according to the IMF. We've just been through a military escalation situation between India and Pakistan after Operation Sindur, and there is this sense of nationalism that is ever so vibrant at this moment, more pronounced than even earlier. How do you look at this, and was your campaign planned before, during, after Operation Sindur, or is this something that you've always believed about India?
Well, "There's an Air About India" was actually an old Air India campaign. The tagline was created by the legendary Bobby Kooka. And we wanted to show the new India. In my view, one of the best ever tourism campaigns ever done was the "Incredible India" one, which showed the diversity and vibrancy of India. And we felt that as India's flag carrier to the world, the airline that has done so for nine decades or so, it was important for us to continue to show the world how India is evolving, what it now offers, the vibrancy and diversity. So we had planned this sometime in advance. Yes, it has landed in a time where there's perhaps even more resonance, but I think it's also something that we will continue to do because we have a responsibility to show off India to the world.
Mr. Wilson, you also earlier this year mentioned that the ongoing mergers and new aircraft deliveries have expanded the Air India Group to 300 aircraft, enabling the airline to service a lot more destinations. I want to ask you on the management of these 300 aircraft, new destinations being added, how is this exercise going to move forward along with acquisitions? And what does this expansion really entail in terms of numbers?
Right. So we always set out this transformation program as a five-year mission. We're a little over halfway through that. We're into what I would say is day four of the five-day test match. Most of the heavy lifting that we needed to do in order to build the new Air India has been done in the first three years: the merger of the four airlines, the upgradation of physical premises, the complete replatforming of the IT landscape, the induction of more than 100 new aircraft into the fleet, the improvement of operating processes, commercial processes, people management processes, customer service processes. And really now the effort is going to be on completing the refit and improvement of our legacy aircraft. Narrow-body aircraft upgradation is well underway; we're about two-thirds of the way through the process, and that should complete by the end of the year. And the legacy widebody aircraft, the first of which goes into a hangar in July of this year, so a little over a month away. Once that aircraft comes out and is certified, then by the end of this year we'll be putting two or three aircraft into the hangar each month for upgradation, such that the complete fleet refit is done by 2027. Now, at that point, we have what we would consider the new Air India: world-class global airline with an Indian heart. And I think it would then become the completion of the objective of the transformation, and also I think it will make more consistent the product proposition that presently exists. Even today, you can see the future Air India on our A350 aircraft that are flying to London and to New York, which have an NPS of well over 60, and I think are the equivalent of or better than nearly any airline in the world. And that is the Air India that we're working towards, and that will become more consistently apparent over the next two years.
Of course, Air India has an emotional bonding with Indians across the world, and they would rush to an Air India flight. But customer service that you mentioned, a few hiccups there, because all of these hiccups actually are reflected on social media just so openly, sometimes in terms of broken seats, which even a union minister complained about, tweeted about one time—Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Agriculture Minister—and then there have been food deficiencies pointed out by Chef Sanjeev Kapoor. These customer service issues, broken seats, is something that is easily identifiable and addressable. Why would Air India still have these problems ongoing?
Well, it's easily identifiable; it's not always easily addressable. The aircraft that we operate had not been well maintained for many, many years. The seats and the inflight entertainment systems on the wide-body aircraft are more than 15 years old, and they're obsolete and out of production. So when they break—and they break on any airline, any aircraft—there's simply not the spare parts with which to fix them. So we've had to produce our own in some cases, but these are regulated aircraft; you can't just tape things up. And so that's why we were so focused on doing the full retrofit: we would replace all of the seats and all of the entertainment systems with latest generation. Now, that has been impacted by the supply chain coming out of COVID of seats, particularly first and business class seats, which is why the refit of these aircraft has happened later than we would like. As I say, it is now happening, and we've got line of sight to a completion between now and 2027. But in the meantime, we've done our best to keep things operational. There has been material improvement. It hasn't been perfect. That is in part what we've inherited and therefore struggling to improve, but absolutely we will get there. As I say, you see the new Air India on our A350 service, and progressively over the next two years, as more aircraft are upgraded, that is going to be the consistent standard across the fleet.
But several customers have asked this question: if a seat is broken, don't sell that seat. Simple identification issue. We all understand that retrofitting is a time-consuming process, but if it's an identified broken seat, don't sell it so that no passenger has to deal with a broken seat. How difficult can that be?
So bear in mind that we sell tickets on an aircraft nearly a year in advance of flying it. The seat might break on the inbound flight of the aircraft that you're just about to take. If you're sitting in New York and the seat breaks between Delhi and New York, you're in New York—what to do? So we undersell the capacity because we anticipate that there are some seats that are not going to be functional for the return flight, but it's always a matter of averages, and it's not every time that you can get it exactly right. So this is what happens. Unfortunately, that's the reality of the environment in which we operate. We try and mitigate it as best we can. The solution to the problem is completely replacing all of the seats and inflight entertainment systems. We've put mitigations in place with the entertainment system; we now have streaming wireless in addition to the seatback system onboard all of our aircraft. So we're getting there. Unfortunately, work in progress. It's just not something that we can wave a magic wand and solve immediately.
So you're saying another two years before all of this gets sorted out?
It will become progressively better and better the more aircraft are upgraded. As I say, narrow-bodies by the end of the year, wide-bodies more and more over the course of the next two years, and by 2027 solved. But I also would like to address the difference between regrettable instances and the average experience, because we robustly measure Net Promoter Score. More than 200,000 people every month score their journey having just traveled. This is consumer feedback, actually people that have flown us. Now, when we started on the privatization journey, we had a negative NPS of some minus 17, minus 18. As I speak today domestically in May 2025, we're over 50. So that is nearly a 70-point increase in NPS.
Over 50, you said? Over positive 50?
Okay, starting from a position of nearly minus 20. That's been across the board, and it's particularly apparent on the newer aircraft that we have and especially the A350. But that shows that when people are flying on what we would consider the new Air India, it's delivering a proposition that people want and people like, and people are voting empirically as a positive experience. If I can also talk about on-time performance: having done the merger with Vistara and the other airlines and replatformed the operating system, the first quarter post that merger we achieved the highest OTP that we ever have. It was higher than Vistara's used to be. And NPS also the highest we've ever had, higher than Vistara's used to be. In the current quarter, both OTP and NPS are higher still.
Absolutely, I agree with you. Sometimes the negatives blow out of proportion; everybody picks up a bad story, many people do not pick up a good story. But sometimes gaps in information, delayed flights—people keep putting these on social media, and that's why it's more apparent to users, to clients, and people like us. Is there a streamlining of that information interface with passengers that needs a little more coordination and maybe upgradation?
Oh look, I would say that it's never going to be a journey that is complete. There will always be improvement that we want to make and should make. Indeed, every company is always looking to improve. One of the things we've invested a lot in this year—well, this year and years past—is our mobile app and our customer notification system. It's rated very, very highly on the App Store, one of the highest-rated airline apps in the world. And that's the channel through which we're trying to communicate to people: what gate are you operating from, what time is your flight departing, is your baggage onboard—all of the things that people want during the purpose of their travel. We rolled out the airline industry's first GenAI chatbot a couple of years ago, again with the purpose of making sure we're communicating to people on a timely basis, accurately, clearly. And we're continuing to invest in that because we think that clear, honest, trustworthy communication is important. Will we be getting it perfect every time? I'd like to think eventually we might, but certainly I acknowledge the fact that there's still room for improvement.
You've run Singapore Airlines and its budget airline, Scoot. How do you see the environment in terms of the Indian economy versus maybe Singapore or just a small country like Singapore? Where is it easier in terms of handling a company compared to the diverse expectations in India?
There's a few dimensions to this. Speaking specifically from an airline context, a single city-state or single hub operation, which is most airlines around the world, is inherently more simple because all of your aircraft are coming to and through one place, all of your crew at one place, most of your maintenance is done at that one place. It's a relatively simple operation. Not saying it's easy, but it's simpler. In a North America environment or an Indian environment, you've got multiple hubs that you're operating, you've got a big international network together with a big domestic network, you've got very diverse geographies and therefore weather patterns and all the other external factors. So aviation in India is far more complex than in most places around the world. At the same time, you've got infrastructure in some cases which is world-class, and in other cases you've got infrastructure which could do with a little bit more investment and improvement. And so you're trying to marry those together as well. But I think one of the things that I find wonderful about India is people are good problem solvers. People can react to situations very, very quickly. They can find a way forward. People are open to change. And I think we're able to do wonders in a relatively short space of time, evidence being our mergers that I think in other countries would take—and history has proven take—much, much longer to do.
Have you figured out what the Indian word for this is? You've been here now for three years. How much of the Indian flavor—
It's called the Indian "jugaad". Yes, I was going to say jugaad.
