Ronojoy Dutta appointed IndiGo CEO

A day after InterGlobe Aviation-owned IndiGo posted a 75 per cent fall in its third quarter profit, the airline appointed aviation industry veteran Ronojoy Dutta as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), with effect from Thursday.

The airline's board also approved the appointment of Independent Non-Executive Director Meleveetil Damodaran as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company.

The Board of Directors at its meeting on Thursday "approved the appointment of Ronojoy Dutta, as Chief Executive Officer of the company with effect from January 24", the country's largest airline by market share said in a BSE filing.

The position was lying vacant for about nine months when President Aditya Ghosh resigned in April 2018 after a decade of piloting the airline.

Dutta, an alumnus of IIT and Harvard Business School, had recently joined the airline as a consultant. He was earlier the co-founder and Managing Director of ACO Investment, an investment advisory firm in the field of aviation and infrastructure.

The 67-year-old served as the President of Air Sahara from 2005 to 2008 and President of United Airlines from 1999 till 2002. He led the board of United Airlines every year from 1995 to 2002 in developing five year strategic plans.

Dutta has also served on the board of US Airways during 2003-2004 and Marsico Trust Funds from 1997 to 2005, the budget passenger carrier said.

On Wednesday, IndiGo posted a 75 per cent fall in its third-quarter profit to Rs 190.89 crore due to high fuel prices and rupee depreciation. Profit in the year-ago quarter was Rs 762.03 crore. However, revenue from operations rose 28 per cent to Rs 7,916.22 crore.

"We have posted a profit of Rs 1.9 billion in a continued difficult environment and have grown our fleet by one aircraft a week for a 33 per cent capacity increase for the quarter. Very few airlines around the world have the operational resilience to absorb such rapid growth," IndiGo co-founder and interim CEO Rahul Bhatia had said.

--IANS

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