Low cost airlines planning revamp of management staff

Low-cost carriers are out to strengthen their senior management bandwidth. The Bangalore-based Air Deccan is close to appointing a leading consultancy firm to advise it on restructuring the organisational structure, while it scouts for senior management professionals with domain expertise in finance, marketing, taxation, banking and insurance. The low-cost carrier has just appointed Manab Bose, an ex-Tata group hand, as HR head, while bringing in Reinhard Wilm from GoAir as head of flight training. Over the next one year, Air Deccan would like to have in place a team of 35-40 professionals in senior and middle management positions, at the senior vice-president and vice-president levels. “Some degree of restructuring of the organisation would facilitate faster top-level decision-making,” said Air Deccan finance director Mohan Kumar.

The top management also feels the need for creating a middle-management-level hierarchy, in view of the rapid expansion of operations that the airline has gone through over the past one year. Air Deccan is not the only low-cost carrier looking for top level professionals. The Delhi-based SpiceJet wants to hire a CFO in the current calendar year to man its expanding operations, while Jeh Wadia’s Go Air may see some new faces at the top, once it decides to ramp up operations, by the year end. The latest low-cost start-up, IndiGo, already has a dozen-odd professionals in its senior management team, with at least two of them being expats. It would add station managers to any new destinations it flies into this year.

HR industry professionals note that it is important for fledgling low-cost carriers to move from the start-up phase when management decisions are concentrated on a handful of top-level executives generally promoters and move towards a decentralised structure of decision-making as they scale up operations. Aviation industry analysts feel that Indian low-cost carriers need to hire more expat professionals for managing their airlines. “Indian players need not re-invent the wheel as to how to run the low-cost business. Having expat professionals in key operational areas may help them avoid the mistakes that low-cost carriers made globally,” feels the CEO of a low-cost carrier.

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