Tewolde Gebremariam has formally taken charge as Air India’s chief executive and managing director. His first test is not to announce a vision, but to decide which operational problems cannot wait for one.
The former Ethiopian Airlines chief inherits a carrier in mid-transformation of a $400m retrofit programme, disrupted international economics, a weakened domestic market and a large forthcoming fleet induction. His stated priorities are safety, operational reliability and profitability. The question is what decisions turn them into measurable action.
Air India’s immediate need is a daily command picture lke aircraft out of service, defect recurrence, spare-parts shortages, delayed maintenance releases, crew-positioning failures and flight disruptions by root cause. Gebremariam’s experience in building Ethiopian Airlines’ operational and engineering capacity is relevant precisely because Air India’s network cannot become reliable merely by adding aircraft, a recipe that his predecessor was relying upon. As the airline flies, one should continue to track the on-time performance and cancellations, month by month vis-a-vis technical and operational causes of cancellations. Availability of aircraft, average turnaround time.
Air India has committed $400m to refurbish 67 older aircraft which includes 27 Airbus A320neo narrowbodies and 40 Boeing widebodies. It has begun sending legacy Boeing 787-8s for retrofit work in Shanghai where three Dreamliners have reportedly been completed, two were undergoing work, and 16 more 787-8 retrofits were planned for 2027.
The new chief must decide whether to accelerate cabin refurbishment and accept temporary capacity pressure or slow it to protect schedules. The wrong answer is to promise both rapid retrofits and unchanged reliability without enough spare aircraft and engines.
The decision to redraw the network around routes that still make money after detours, fuel surcharges and airspace constraints. Air India has already reduced or suspended some overseas operations amid high fuel costs and airspace restrictions, while maintaining that more than 1200 international flights a month would continue. It also introduced phased fuel surcharges in response to geopolitical pressure in the Gulf.
The strategic business sense is not whether to keep every legacy international route. It is whether each route can cover the cost of longer flying times, disrupted scheduling, crew duty constraints and the aircraft it ties up. This matters especially when foreign airlines can often carry India-bound traffic with fewer network penalties.
India’s domestic passengers fell 6.34% year on year to 12.126 million in August, while IATA reported a sharper 7.5% domestic demand contraction and a 78.7% load factor. That is a warning that the market has become softer, not merely smaller because airlines offered fewer seats.
Air India must avoid the oldest trap in aviation by mistaking a capacity problem for a marketing problem. If consumers are resisting high fares, discounting may restore volume but damage yield. If schedules are unreliable, cutting fares does not repair confidence. If capacity is wrong on certain routes, the airline must redeploy aircraft before competitors do.
Mumbai’s airport system is expected to change rapidly with 30% of international flights will move to Navi Mumbai from October 2026 as redevelopment begins at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport’s Terminal 1. Navi Mumbai has also received a first-year landing-charge waiver for international services, followed by reduced charges in later years.
For Air India, this is a hub-design question. Moving isolated point-to-point international services to Navi Mumbai may lower costs and build a second gateway. Moving connecting flights without a coherent domestic feed bank could weaken transfers, confuse passengers and impose long cross-city journeys. The airline must decide which airport performs which network role.
Gebremariam’s first 30 days should produce more operating commitments such as an aircraft-availability target, a retrofit timetable, a route-profitability review, a domestic-demand response and a Mumbai network plan.
The Maharaja is not short of aspiration. Its new chief’s first task is to make the airline’s daily machinery like aircraft, crews, maintenance, schedules and hubs run with the same discipline as its expansion plans.