Ahead of Air France-KLM JV, Jet Airways to strengthen management team

Air France-KLM's Marnix Fruitema to join Jet; former Jet CCO Raj Sivakumar set to return to airline

Jet Airways is hiring senior executives in commercial and operations roles as it plans to expand. The move, seen as a part of wider organisational restructuring, comes ahead of its proposed joint venture with Air France-KLM.

Raj Sivakumar, Jet’s former chief commercial officer, is set to return from business process management firm WNS. He is expected to oversee airline partnerships and revenue management. The airline’s revenue management head Prasad Kholkute had quit few months ago.

 

Marnix Fruitema, Air France-KLM’s senior vice-president in charge of North America, is joining Jet and is likely to be in charge of global sales. Fruitema is also expected to bring closer cooperation between Jet Airways and Air France-KLM.

Jeff Wilkinson, who quit as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Etihad’s engineering division, is tipped to be the new chief operating officer at Jet.

 

Jet, Air France-KLM and Etihad declined to comment to queries. The management rejig comes a month after Vinay Dube took charge as the CEO of Jet. Dube served as senior vice-president (Asia-Pacific) at Delta Airlines and is bringing new structure in the airline. 

Sources say there could be restructuring of portfolios and responsibilities for senior executives in the airline.
 

These changes come at a time when Jet is launching new flights to Amsterdam, Paris and London this winter. The airlines are close to signing a commercial cooperation agreement,  including a joint venture, to ensure profitability on routes between India to Amsterdam and Paris.

A JV is an advanced form of commercial partnership between airlines and enables participating airlines share revenue or profit on routes. The airlines also collaborate on network, schedules, sales and pricing under a JV which requires approval from antitrust authorities.

While Jet is not part of any such arrangement, Air France-KLM, Delta and Virgin Atlantic are part of trans Atlantic JV pacts which covers over 25 per cent of market share between Europe-US routes. Recently, these airlines decided to combine their two JV agreements following equity investment deals among partners. Delta and China Eastern Airlines have acquired 10 per cent stake in Air France-KLM, which in turn, has bought 31 per cent stake in Richard Branson-founded Virgin Atlantic.