Air India names Baldauf as COO

National carrier Air India today named expat Gustav Baldauf as its chief operating officer, who along with CMD Arvind Jadhav, will play a key role in turning around the loss-making airline.

According to a statement by the airline, the Air India board in its meeting today approved the appointment of Baldauf, who earlier had a stint with private airline Jet Airways.

Baldauf, currently Executive Vice-President, Flight Operations, Austrian Airlines, was named as COO after being short-listed along with two other expats from amongst 140 applicants.

Air India's Chairman and Managing Director Jadhav and corporate bigwigs Anand Mahindra, S Jindal and Uday Kotak had recently interviewed the three aspirants.

Baldauf's stint with the Naresh Goyal-led Jet had apparently worked in his favour.

The board has also also decided to present a comprehensive turnaround plan for the airline, which is projected to incur a loss of over Rs 5,000 crore in 2009-10, within 30 days.

According to the statement, four committees-- audit, finance, strategy and HR -- have been set up to provide inputs to the management and through which progress of the turnaround plan will be monitored.

"Each of the new independent directors is committed to helping the airline and will devote time to this through their participation in the committees," the statement added.

The new directors who have been recently appointed are industrialists Anand Mahindra and Harsh Neotia, Amit Mitra of industry body Ficci and former Air Force chief Fali Major.

This was the first Board meeting the new members have attended.

Further, it was decided that the Board would not comment on the specific turnaround tasks until the comprehensive plan has been presented to it by Air India's Chairman and the new COO, the statement said.

Seized by the pressing need for an IT system, the Board decided to press ahead with its maintanance, repair and overhaul (MRO) and "all quick-hit IT decisions", the statement said.

The board has authorised the committee to meet in 15 days to take a decision on this issue, it added.