Air India’s incoming CEO spent four decades building the engineering, training, cargo, and operational systems behind Ethiopian Airlines. Those are precisely the areas where Tata’s first four years fell short.
Tewolde Gebremariam does not fit the modern template of a turnaround CEO. He is not a celebrity executive or brand storyteller. Joining Ethiopian Airlines in 1985, he rose through cargo, overseas sales, commercial leadership, and operations to spend over a decade as group CEO. His response to management criticism was unsentimental: “Judge me by the numbers.”
Stock image used for representative purposes | Credits: Air India
The numbers were difficult to argue with. Under his leadership, Ethiopian’s annual revenue grew from ~$1 billion to $4.5 billion. Its fleet expanded from 33 aircraft to 130, while annual passenger volumes grew from ~3 million to 12 million pre-pandemic. Ethiopian also built over $700 million in cargo terminals, maintenance hangars, engineering workshops, simulators, and an aviation academy.
This makes his appointment at Air India revealing. Four years into Tata ownership and under Campbell, Air India had a larger fleet, a new identity, and hundreds of aircraft on order, yet remained well short of Vihaan.AI’s domestic market-share target and recorded a combined annual loss exceeding ₹20,000 crore. Tewolde was hired because Campbell could not make the operational engine behind that story work.
Campbell ordered aircraft. Tewolde built the system that keeps them flying.
In February 2023, Air India placed a historic order for 470 aircraft (including 70 widebodies) to rebuild at global scale. But ordering aircraft creates capacity on a spreadsheet; an airline builder must create the engineering, maintenance, training, and crew systems to keep that capacity airborne.
That distinction defines the gap between Air India’s ambition and execution. Vihaan.AI promised operational reliability, profitability, and at least 30% domestic market share within five years. Nearly four years later, the group remains at 23.9%.
The fleet refurbishment programme tells a similar story. In December 2022, Air India committed over $400 million to refurbish 40 legacy widebodies (27 Boeing 787s and 13 Boeing 777s), targeting a mid-2024 return for the first aircraft. However, the first retrofitted 787 returned only in April 2026, with the majority now lined up through 2028.
Stock image used for representative purposes | Credits: Air India
Meanwhile, repetitive technical defects keep fleet reliability under scrutiny. In January 2026, Air India recorded 1.09 technical incidents per 1,000 flights, more than four times its December 2024 rate, exposing a struggle with process discipline.
Tewolde treated maintenance differently. He made aviation infrastructure a core strategic pillar, investing over $700 million in MRO, cargo, and training to ensure self-sufficiency while creating a third-party maintenance business for external carriers.
This paid off during COVID-19: Ethiopian used its own technical teams to reconfigure 25 passenger aircraft for cargo, turning maintenance into a resilient revenue generator rather than a cost centre. While Tewolde cannot manufacture missing engines or force faster Boeing deliveries, he will place aircraft availability over order announcements.
Campbell expanded Air India’s network. Tewolde built network economics.
Air India entered Tata ownership with advantages most CEOs dream of: the Tata balance sheet, India’s massive domestic market, a global diaspora, valuable slots, the Vistara franchise, and passenger goodwill. Yet Air India and Air India Express recorded a combined loss exceeding $2 billion in FY2025-26. The airline remains behind IndiGo domestically and continues to lose international traffic to hubs in Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, and Singapore.
Campbell added routes, placed aircraft commitments, and merged Vistara, but failed to convert the domestic network into a seamless, profitable long-haul feed engine.
This is where Tewolde’s experience fits. Addis Ababa could not generate enough local premium demand for a global carrier. Tewolde combined smaller passenger flows from dozens of African cities, connecting them through coordinated hub banks toward Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America.
Between FY2010-11 and FY2018-19, Ethiopian expanded from 46 aircraft ($1.51B revenue, $75M profit) to 116 aircraft carrying 12.1 million passengers ($3.91B revenue, $260M profit), eventually reaching $4.5 billion turnover.
Supporting businesses reinforced this network. Ethiopian invested heavily in dedicated freighters, cold-chain facilities, and pharmaceutical logistics, growing cargo volume from ~160,000 tonnes in FY2010-11 to over 750,000 tonnes in FY2021-22 (accounting for nearly half of group revenue). According to AFRAA, Ethiopian carried 736,000 tonnes in the 12 months to March 2021, while 12 other African carriers combined moved ~718,000 tonnes in calendar 2020.
These investments enabled Ethiopian to survive COVID-19 without a government bailout, mass layoffs, or salary cuts. While Air India negotiates with independent airport operators and competes directly with IndiGo, Tewolde brings a vital instinct: routes must function as connected components of a profitable system.
Campbell ran a transformation programme. Tewolde built an institution.
Air India’s transformation has merged legacy Air India, Vistara, Air India Express, former AirAsia India, Tata executives, foreign hires, and Singapore Airlines influences. The legal mergers are complete; the institution is not.
Operational gaps reflect this division. A July 2025 DGCA audit identified 51 lapses—including training gaps, unapproved simulator use, weak rostering, and unclear operational accountability—revealing an airline expanding faster than its underlying controls. When failures are grouped into a generic five-year plan, daily operational ownership dissolves.
Tewolde is an institutionalist who built management culture around internal development, technical expertise, and continuity. After Ethiopian Flight 302 crashed in 2019, he visited the site, publicly supported his staff, confronted Boeing, and mandated that Ethiopian’s own pilots and engineers clear the 737 MAX before re-entry. His existing MRO and cargo divisions later allowed the airline to pivot during COVID-19 without restructuring. He built an institution capable of absorbing catastrophe.
Recreating this success at Air India is not guaranteed. Tewolde inherited a strong foundation from Girma Wake, operated in a state-aligned system, and faced no home competitor like IndiGo. His hierarchical style could also risk overcentralisation within Tata’s complex structure. However, Air India currently requires operating accountability over transformation committees.
Tata appears to know what Tewolde cannot do alone.
Tewolde is not a premium-hospitality, digital, or local regulatory specialist. The structure around him addresses some of these gaps: Pradeep Singh Kharola brings civil aviation experience, Singapore Airlines/Vistara provides service expertise, and Basil Kwauk oversees operations alongside MRO partnerships with Boeing and SIA Engineering.
Stock image used for representative purposes | Credits: Air India , Star Alliance
Yet, if advisers, shareholders, and executives become parallel authority centers, Tata risks recreating the fragmentation it hired him to solve. Tewolde requires complementary expertise, not parallel leadership.
Judge him by the numbers.
Tewolde’s tenure will not be measured by brand films, new uniforms, or jet orders. It will be tracked through grounded-aircraft counts, turnaround times, crew productivity, regulatory compliance, connection integrity, cargo yield, and loss reduction.
Campbell Wilson delivered an Air India that looked transformed. But after four years and billions in investment, the carrier beneath the surface remained unreliable, fragmented, and financially weak.
Tewolde Gebremariam was brought in to fix the underlying mechanics. As he once demanded of his critics, numbers—not optics—will determine whether Air India’s turnaround succeeds.