When the opportunity came to lead Air India back to its former glory, Christchurch-born Campbell Wilson couldn’t resist.
He was leading Singapore Airlines’ subsidiary Scoot last year when he was offered the job, which puts him at the epicentre of a looming shift in global aviation power.
“I thought this is a wonderful opportunity to restore a brand that is quite iconic and in a market that is fast growing and is becoming more the centre or a key point in global aviation,” says Wilson from Air India’s new corporate headquarters at Gurugram, near Delhi.
He says strong and ambitious shareholders are backing a series of mergers and the world’s biggest aircraft order, to make Air India Group a domestic and regional powerhouse and restore its international status with the capability to battle massive long-haul rivals.
The chief executive’s job is “an opportunity to perform a national mission” - a mission that has a name and an ambitious timeframe. it is titled “Vihaan.AI”, which in Sanskrit, the ancient and classical language of India, signifies the dawn of a new era.
Wilson unveiled the plan in September last year. It aims to completely transform the group with a three-phase programme over the next five years. When mergers are complete, the group he leads will have 22,000 staff - and it is already looking for thousands more.
Wilson is in his early 50s and grew up in Sumner, went to Shirley Boys’ High School and studied at Canterbury University, where he graduated with a Master of Commerce with honours in 1994.
He travelled overseas soon after, loved it, and when he came back to New Zealand, worked on getting abroad again.
“I had the experience of meeting someone who had been posted to New York on the company dime and I thought that sounds like a bloody good gig,” he says.
So Wilson looked around for employers who might be able to offer the same opportunity.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise was one, and Singapore Airlines was another.
“Singapore Airlines had a line in the ad saying the successful candidate will have the opportunity to relocate to anywhere the company flies. So I thought ‘that’s me’.”
He joined as a management trainee in 1996, spent three years in New Zealand, then got posted to Sydney for three years. Next came time in Singapore, before he was sent to run the airline’s Canadian business, then Hong Kong and Japan.
In 2011 he was given the task of starting up Scoot, Singapore Airlines’ low-cost carrier. He was “employee number one” at Scoot, which operated independently, although it was part of the Singapore Airlines group. That operation has now grown to just on 60 narrow- and wide-body planes that fly to about the same number of destinations.
Wilson was at Scoot for five years before going back to Singapore Airlines (SQ) as head of commercial sales and marketing.
“It was basically a top-to-bottom transformation of the division,” he says. “Then at the beginning of Covid I went back to Scoot to see it through the pandemic.”
Once seen as a contender for Singapore Airlines’ top job, Wilson was approached by Air India.
Staying connected
The links between Singapore Airlines and Air India run deep.
Singapore Airlines holds a 49 per cent stake in Vistara, the balance of which is owned by Air India’s owner, Tata Sons, the huge conglomerate which early last year stepped in to buy it back.
Vistara, a full-service domestic airline, is set to be fully integrated within Air India (AI), and in further rationalisation, Tata-owned budget carriers Air Asia India and Air India Express will be merged. When completed, this will leave Tata with one full-service and one low-cost airline, with a value estimated by the Financial Times at more than $7 billion.
At present, the consolidated group will have 218 aircraft but on the way are 470 more. By the number of planes, that is the biggest civilian aircraft order ever, eclipsing by 10 an American Airlines purchase in 2011.
Wilson says about 18 months after Scoot started in 2011, Vistara sent staff to Singapore on a fact-finding mission.
“I handed them the whole playbook of how to start an airline, for better or worse,” he says.
“And since then, being on the SQ management committee, I’ve seen the establishment, the growth, challenges and opportunities of Vistara.”
He also got an insight into Tata, which operates in more than 100 companies and has a market capitalisation of more than $500 billion.
And the relationship between Singapore Airlines and Air India pre-dated the financial link. When Singapore Airlines was formed in 1972, it was Air India that it turned to for inspiration and advice.
Formed in 1932, Air India came to embody style and service, winning accolades around the world for the way it pampered passengers throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
But under continued state ownership, the airline suffered heavy losses, underinvestment and poor decision-making. It was left with a muddled fleet, old planes and tired products.
When he arrived, Wilson found the managers, who at that stage were recently installed from all parts of the Tata Group, were “functionally very good”, but needed to be brought together into a coherent whole.
“Air India was a very siloed organisation and so there needed to be some sort of cross-functional integration interaction, governance.”
Among the staff, he has found a strong commitment to what is as much a start-up as a turnaround.
“There’s a great openness to change. I hadn’t expected that, I expected some resistance but there’s been none. People are hungry to do better and keen for an example of what better looks like.”
Wilson says there is also a strong awareness of Air India’s glory days. “The word that’s often used here is ‘erstwhile’.”
New ways of measuring performance are being implemented so staff can see what is an acceptable threshold of performance and what’s not. “It’s really returning it to that sort of past glory, high emphasis on quality, high emphasis on service.”
Wilson has a relaxed style but according to reports, he doesn’t beat around the bush.
The FT reports a person familiar with Singapore Airlines’ thinking as saying the airline “is confident in Campbell, who is straightforward and good at identifying and tackling issues”.
The big deal
Air India’s transformation is now under way, with more than $600m committed to refurbishing cabins alone.
But it was the biggest-ever aircraft order that really put the airline industry on notice.
Air India has signed up for 470 planes, evenly split between Boeing and Airbus. The order is estimated to be worth more than $110b at list prices.
Wilson says the airline is opening the throttle because it is playing catch-up. India has been poorly served by long-haul, non-stop capacity originating in the country.
He says there are just 40 wide-body jets operating out of India, which has a population of 1.4 billion people. By comparison, Singapore Airlines has about 130 twin-aisle planes while Air New Zealand has 18, based in a country with a population of around 5 million.
It was time for an Indian carrier to do the heavy lifting out of the country, which is experiencing rapid population and economic growth and is geographically well-placed to take on Emirates, which has cornered a big chunk of the market, and Asia’s mega-airlines.
Serving the Indian diaspora, which is tens of millions strong, provides a base of demand to and from the country.
“The order of aircraft is taking advantage of the clear and natural growth,” says Wilson. “It is serving a market that has been underserved from a non-stop international perspective, certainly by an Indian carrier.”
India may have already overtaken China as the most populous nation in the world and its economy is forecast to expand the fastest among the G20 nations, while a rapidly growing middle class will spend more on air travel.
That Indian middle class is predicted to grow from 80 million people in 2018 to 580 million by 2025.
“I think if you look at how India is transforming and positioning itself on the world stage in every sphere, it is more confident to apply more influence and being more of a player at the table,” says Wilson.
Asserting itself in aviation is part of this.
“It has not had the status and the stature and the scale in the aviation sphere that the size of the market and the economy would indicate it should have. And so it’s just catching up to the point it probably should have been already.”
Airbus agrees. “India is on the verge of an international air travel revolution. Our partnership with the Tatas and our aircraft solutions will write that new chapter for the country’s air connectivity,” says Christian Scherer, Airbus chief commercial officer and head of international.
The gargantuan aircraft order includes 400 narrow-body planes, many for the domestic market, which Wilson says continues to grow and will underpin the company.
With its simplified structure and new fleet, it will be better able to compete with IndiGo, the country’s biggest airline with about 55 per cent market share in its domestic-focused operation.
Over the next five years, Air India airlines aim to capture at least 30 per cent of the domestic market.
“I think most people are loyal to the national brand, it serves them well. We’re focused on what we can do to give the customer what they want,” says Wilson.
Is New Zealand on the radar?
In 2020, Air India made repatriation flights to New Zealand for Kiwis stuck overseas and for Indians stranded here by closed borders.
It made six non-stop flights using a Boeing 777-200LR between Auckland and Delhi and Mumbai, flights of around 16 hours.
Air New Zealand has assessed direct connections before and passed, but at the time of the repatriation flights, Auckland Airport said they were a glimpse of the future.
In 2019, when 65,000 Indians visited New Zealand via a third country, a tourism delegation came here to work on the development of closer links.
So, are non-stop flights to New Zealand on Air India’s radar?
Yes, says Wilson, but not for now. There are other destinations with bigger resident Indian populations on much busier routes that will come first, from when the new planes start arriving later this year.
“We’ve got a lot of other priorities at the moment, North America and Europe are the highest priority given the size of the market, but East Asia, Australia and New Zealand are clearly of interest,” he says.
It was a matter of getting the aircraft into the fleet and forging the right relationships to make new routes work.
“India’s size and the diaspora and the economic growth really support a network that’s going to be global and New Zealand is certainly part of the long-term plan.”
It’s not just passengers that will be part of the calculation.
“Clearly, there’s a huge market for New Zealand-produced materials, whether its primary produce or other things. I think the drivers for connection are only going to increase.”
For Wilson and wife Tammy, India is the ninth country they’ve lived in and they’re loving it.
“Looking out the window there’s a clear blue sky, which has been this way for weeks,” he said last month from Gurugram.
There’s a lot of talk about cricket, and people have been very welcoming in what he says is the most fascinating place he’s worked in.
“I know it’s a cliché - the diversity of India is incredible. It’s a country of contrasts in every respect.”
Air India’s flight path
Air India took off in 1932, when J.R.D Tata formed an airline.
The first Indian to receive a commercial pilot’s licence, he launched an airmail service from what was then Bombay to Karachi via Ahmedabad.
Nationalised in 1953, Air India built a world-leading reputation for luxury and hospitality.
The fleet of Boeing 747s it introduced in the early 1970s boasted iconic Maharaja Lounges, branded as “Your Palace In The Sky”.
Interiors featured cocktail bars and epitomised the idea of the golden age of travel. However, the airline lost its way and the image became tarnished.
After 69 years as a Government-owned enterprise, Air India was reclaimed for more than $3b by Tata, which immediately set about rationalising the group.
The transformation programme it launched soon after Wilson became chief executive, Vihaan.AI, focuses on five key pillars: exceptional customer experience, robust operations, industry-best talent, industry leadership, and commercial efficiency and profitability.