Economic turnaround is priority: Air India CMD

Newly appointed chairman and managing director of Air India, Rohit Nandan, has said his foremost priority would be to ensure timely implementation of the airline's restructuring plans. As part of the effort, he said, he would also be focussed on gaining greater market share and providing better customer experience.

Nandan was speaking in an interview with a national economic daily.

Talking about the carrier's economic turnaround plans he said his priority would be to implement restructuring in a limited timeframe. He would try and ensure that money came in both from the government and through operations.

In this regard he pointed out that the restructuring plan was being finalised at the Group of Ministers level.

He said it was important that the airline revitalised customer experience and that customer satisfaction would be his main focus. He said with changing times the carrier needed ''to respond to new needs of a youthful India. Young fliers should choose AI and feel satisfied with the product.''

In this regard he mentioned that the ''airline needs a complete makeover and must meet expectations. It should give people value for money.''

With regard to employee-management relations, which have soured considerably, he said he would ''keep one day in a week as an open forum, when anyone can come and freely meet me to discuss organisational or even personal problems.''