Newsmaker: Gustav Baldauf

An unceremonious exit

Just when one thought all was well with the turnaround plan of Air India (AI), three key executives appointed to implement the plan were either asked to leave or left the airline. The last to go was the one who came first and was key in the turnaround plan — Chief Operating Officer (COO) Gustav Baldauf.

The other two were AI Express COO Pawan Arora and AI’s Chief Training Officer Stephen Sukumar. AI Express is the low-cost international subsidiary of AI and operates mainly on routes to the West Asian and Southeast Asian countries.

Baldauf’s entry in AI was historical, as he was the first COO and expat to have joined the airline, without many inside and outside the carrier welcoming him.

After Baldauf’s appointment was cleared by a committee headed by then aviation secretary, M M Nambiar, eyebrows were raised on his huge salary package. The airline, under huge debt and seeking equity infusion from the government to keep it afloat, was paying him over Rs 3 crore annually.

Criticism of the Austrian COO hardened after he started working with the airline. His handling of the shift in AI’s operations from Terminal 1 to 3 at the Delhi airport was labelled a disaster and Baldauf was never seen at the terminal during the transition. He, apparently, managed it from his office in Mumbai.

But Air India Chairman and Managing Director Arvind Jadhav, who had asked for a COO to keep himself away from the day-to-day operations of the airline, stationed himself at T3 to monitor the shift.

The shift of Kingfisher Airlines, Jet Airways and their low-cost subsidiaries to the new terminal was smooth. This brought Baldauf’s inefficiency out in the open. Questions were also raised on Baldauf’s frequent trips to his country.

The last nail in the coffin, however, was Baldauf’s open criticism of the government — the promoter of the airline — for interfering in the day-to-day functioning of the airline and not letting him function independently.

Following the comment, he was served a showcause notice by the airline management for violating service conduct rules, asking him to explain his act. For want of a justification, Baldauf resigned on February 28, 2011.

Before joining AI, he worked with Aircraft Trading & Airline Consulting in Austria. He had also worked at Austrian Airlines, Jet Airways and had over 26 years of flying experience at Austrian Airlines AG.

With 14,000 hours of flying experience, Baldauf is an instructor and is qualified to launch cold and winter operations. He holds an engineering degree in electrical sciences and has also done an accident investigation course from the University of Southern California.

During his stint at Jet, he served as the vice-president of flight operations. His responsibilities included cockpit crew performance and productivity, flight operation planning, monitoring of operational performance metrics for existing, newly-inducted and proposed to be inducted aircraft in the fleet, restructuring the flight operations department to cope with future expansion and overseeing flight dispatch functions.

His colleagues at Jet Airways remember him as an intelligent and innovative man but a person who would not be very serious about following rules. They add the reason behind his contract with Jet not being extended was his lax attitude.