India’s Aviation Talent Gap. Why do airlines keep looking abroad for CEOs?

In Brief: Thirty-four years of private Indian aviation has produced no domestic CEO pipeline capable of staffing its own top roles. Major airline collapses repeatedly wiped out management teams before they matured into leadership. At one airline, promoter control limited how far internal executives could rise. The result is a sector that keeps reaching abroad for CEOs because the structural conditions to produce them at home don’t exist.

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That gap between wanting Indian CEOs and building the domestic ecosystem that produces it at scale is visible in everything that happened in Indian aviation this year. IndiGo appointed Willy Walsh, a former CEO of IAG and outgoing Director General of IATA. Air India is choosing between two candidates whose operating careers were built outside India: one who spent sixteen years at Singapore Airlines before returning to lead Vistara, and one whose aviation experience is four years old, but accumulated inside the institutional backing of a 150-year conglomerate.

As Air India makes that choice, Campbell Wilson has just stepped down after four years and Pieter Elbers left IndiGo before him. The public debate around both exits asked whether foreign executives understand India well enough to run its airlines, framing it as a selection error. The structural question is different: why has nearly thirty-five years of private aviation in India produced no domestic leadership pipeline deep enough to fill these roles without going abroad?

Jet Airways collapsed in 2019 after 26 years of operation, Kingfisher shut in 2012 after seven and GoFirst in 2023 after eighteen. Along with capital and capacity, each collapse wiped out a generation of managers that should have become India’s future airline CEOs. This is the generation who were midway through the 15-25 years of experience usually needed to produce airline CEOs.

The pipeline that could produce a CEO was interrupted repeatedly before it could complete. IndiGo is the only carrier to have survived long enough to have a realistic chance of finishing that cycle. Yet, its own governance has reportedly interrupted the process once already. The same structural bottleneck of promoter control and governance roadblocking genuine leadership development was also seen when Jet Airways’ collapse was investigated.

What does “Indian” actually mean in this context?

Every executive currently being considered for airline CEO level in India is Indian by origin or an expatriate. The operating experience that qualified them for the role was built somewhere else, such as inside Singapore Airlines, IAG, American Airlines, Delta, or Tata Sons. That is not a criticism of the individuals, but reflects the limits of a domestic pipeline that is still incomplete.

The distinction matters because the government’s preference for Indian leadership is framed as a nationality question. But it’s actually a formation question. In other words, where did the operating capability accumulate, and inside what kind of institution? An Indian executive who spent sixteen years running network planning at Singapore Airlines is not a domestically developed aviation leader in the sense that matters for India’s pipeline problem. His experience was built inside an institution India does not yet have. Appointing him solves today’s vacancy. It does not solve the deeper problem that created the vacancy in the first place.

What each collapse actually destroyed.

Look at the career histories of CEOs at airlines that produce them internally. Goh Choon Phong joined Singapore Airlines in 1990 and became CEO in 2011, i.e. twenty-one years after entry, having rotated through SVP Finance, SVP IT, President of SIA Cargo, and EVP Marketing before the top role. Carsten Spohr joined Lufthansa in 1994 and became CEO in 2014. Ethiopian Airlines produced three consecutive CEOs developed internally over comparable timelines

Figure 1- Indian airline collapses mapped against the leadership pipeline destroyed. Operational years shown for each carrier at the point of shutdown (IndiGo: years to present). Pipeline stages illustrative, derived from comparison with global incumbent airline CEO tenure profiles where successful internal-pipeline CEOs (e.g., Singapore Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, Lufthansa) typically have 20+ years of in-industry, often single-company experience before appointment.

IndiGo is the only carrier that survived long enough to have completed that cycle. It is almost twenty years old and on its third consecutive foreign CEO.

The consistent pattern shows that airline CEO capability is built through rotation across commercial, operational, network, and regulatory functions inside a single institution over fifteen to twenty years. The institution has to survive long enough to complete that cycle, and give executives room to move across functions rather than stall at a ceiling set elsewhere.

Jet Airways collapsed in 2019 with twenty-seven years of operating history. Executives who joined in the early 2000s were well into that formation cycle when the NCLT process froze the airline's structure. Kingfisher shut after seven years, before any meaningful pipeline had formed. Go First closed after eighteen. Every collapse ended the process for its management cohort at whatever stage they had reached.

What Ethiopia did differently to develop domestic aviation talent

Ethiopian Airlines makes the alternative visible. Three consecutive CEOs, Girma Wake, Tewolde Gebremariam, and Mesfin Tasew, were developed inside the Ethiopian Aviation Academy, which the airline established in 1956. An Oxford Academic study of Ethiopian’s development identified the deliberate “Ethiopianisation” policy, replacing foreign expertise with domestically developed capability on a defined timeline, as the founding condition for that outcome. Ethiopian has been operating since 1946. The pipeline took fourty years to mature from founding to first domestically developed CEO. India’s private aviation sector is thirty years old, has lost its four most experienced carriers before they could complete the cycle, and has never had an institutional anchor at management level equivalent to the Ethiopian Aviation Academy. The talent has been dispersed across private carriers that collapsed, overseas markets that absorbed it, and individual airline initiatives that solve the problem for one carrier at a time.

Figure 2- Two contrasting institutional paths in airline development. India's post-1990s liberalisation produced four major collapses (Air Deccan 2007, Kingfisher 2012, Jet Airways 2019, Go First 2023), each one dispersing the management cohort that had been forming. Ethiopian Airlines, founded 1945 with operations commencing 1946, established its in-house Aviation Academy in 1956 and has produced three consecutive CEOs (Girma Wake, Tewolde GebreMariam, Mesfin Tasew) who each spent 25+ years inside the airline before appointment. Sources: SOAS Development Leadership Dialogue case study on Ethiopian Airlines; Ethiopian Airlines corporate press releases; airline operational histories.

Why the talent that survived inside functioning carriers did not rise

The lifecycle collapse explains why India has no deep pipeline. It does not explain why the one carrier that survived long enough to build one (IndiGo, now twenty years old) has still not produced a domestically developed CEO.

Aditya Ghosh joined IndiGo in 2008 and rose to President over ten years. He built the airline through its most critical growth phase. In April 2018, following a dispute with co-founder Rahul Bhatia over expansion strategy, he left. Bhatia’s InterGlobe Enterprises holds contractual rights to appoint IndiGo’s Chairman, Managing Director, CEO and President, established in the shareholder agreement that became public during the 2019 Bhatia-Gangwal dispute. When that ceiling was reached, Bhatia appointed himself as the interim CEO. The role then went to Gregory Taylor, an American who had previously worked at IndiGo in revenue management and built his operating career at United Airlines and US Airways. Sanjay Kumar, IndiGo’s Chief Commercial Officer since 2007, departed under Elbiers, leaving fifteen years of IndiGo specific knowledge.

The IOSR Journal of Business Management’s case study on Jet Airways documented the same dynamic at a different carrier. Even though talented senior executives were present, Goyal did not use their knowledge, which resulted in loss of morale and resignation of important workforce. Independent directors rarely exercised independence because promoter appointment rights made it structurally untenable. The research was published in 2021, and the governance architecture it describes predates and persists today at IndiGo.

This results in a specific and repeated pattern. Executives who develop genuine operating capability inside Indian carriers reach a ceiling set by the promoter’s appointment rights rather than by their own readiness. The most capable ones, with options, leave. They go to the carriers like Singapore Airlines, Delta, Emirates, and Lufthansa, where operating capability is rewarded with operating authority. Ghosh's trajectory after IndiGo is instructive. He did not leave Indian aviation. He co-founded Akasa Air, with Rakesh Jhunjhunwala providing the capital. Vinay Dube, who had been at Jet Airways through its collapse and built earlier experience at Delta, joined as CEO. Both are experienced Indian aviation executives. But Akasa launched in 2022. It is four years old. The formation cycle that was interrupted at IndiGo and at Jet Airways has restarted at a carrier that is, in pipeline terms, where IndiGo was in 2010. The talent did not leave Indian aviation. It dispersed into a new institution and reset the clock.

Figure 3- Internal leadership progression at Indian promoter-led carriers versus decades-old global incumbents. Comparable entry points across the industry, divergent ceiling. Examples drawn from public CEO career histories: Goh Choon Phong (Singapore Airlines, 21 years inside before CEO appointment), Carsten Spohr (Lufthansa, 20 years), Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum (Emirates, founding CEO since 1985). Indian carrier CEO appointments by contrast have predominantly come from external hires — Campbell Wilson at Air India (ex-Scoot/SIA), Pieter Elbers at IndiGo (ex-KLM), Vinay Dube at Akasa (ex-Jet, ex-Delta) — limiting the conversion of in-house functional expertise into top leadership. Sources: airline corporate biographies and Aeraltus analysis.

When those carriers need a CEO, they fetch one back.

What needs to change by 2040?

Six conditions would need to be true simultaneously. One is currently possible. Four are not present. The governance control is structurally the hardest to change, because it requires promoter families to voluntarily reduce the control that has defined Indian aviation’s ownership architecture since liberalisation.

1.     Is there at least one carrier with 25 or more years of uninterrupted stable operation by 2040? IndiGo reaches 34 years by 2040 if it survives intact. Air India’s post-privatisation clock and Akasa Air both started in 2022.

2.     Is there a structured internal rotation across commercial, operations, network, regulatory, and finance functions? This is Partial and undisclosed. Documented as absent at Jet Airways. Not systematically reported in IndiGo or Air India public filings.

3.     Does the Governance architecture that does not override operating management at the promoter level? No. IGE retains contractual appointment rights over IndiGo’s Chairman, MD, CEO, and President. Tata Sons controls Air India’s board constitution.

4.     Is there a sector-level institution developing management talent- not just pilots and engineers? No. Air India’s Amravati Flight Training Organisation (FTO) addresses pilot training only. No equivalent of the Ethiopian Aviation Academy management pipeline exists in India. Talent development is dispersed across individual airline initiatives with no shared institutional anchor.

5.     Is there a Compensation and career pathways competitive with Gulf and European markets at mid-level? No. Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (AME) salary differential of 3 to 4 times between India and the Gulf is documented by The Core, an Indian business publication, in September 2025. Management-level differential is not systematically quantified but is structurally consistent with the engineering pattern.

6.     Is there an incoming foreign leadership mandated to develop domestic successors on a defined timeline? No. Neither Walsh’s IndiGo appointment nor the Air India CEO search has specified succession development as a stated mandate. Elbers’ tenure actively displaced the senior domestic management layer that existed when he arrived.

Why This Sets a Precedent

For people working inside the industry, the pattern is a recurring cost. Each foreign CEO appointment runs three to four years. When it ends, the knowledge that executive built does not stay inside the organisation in usable form unless domestic executives had the authority to develop alongside it. Most of the evidence here suggests they did not. The appointment solves the immediate vacancy. It does not shorten the distance to the next one.

For the stakeholders who have a direct interest in Indian nationals running Indian aviation, the structural question is harder than the nationality question. India is building one of the world's largest aviation networks. The 1500+ aircraft order book needs commercial leaders, network planners, and regulatory managers, not only pilots and engineers. Those roles will be filled from the same pool they are drawn from today unless the pipeline that produces them is deliberately built. Governance ceilings, institutional collapse, and the salary differential with the Gulf have all interrupted that pipeline at different points. None of those conditions resolves itself.

For the Indian aviation professional ten or fifteen years into a career at IndiGo, Air India, or Akasa, the window is the same fifteen to twenty years that was cut short at every predecessor carrier. Whether it closes again depends on three things: whether the carrier they are inside survives long enough to complete the cycle, whether the governance architecture gives them room to move across functions rather than stall below a promoter-controlled ceiling, and whether a sector-level institution ever builds the management pipeline that no individual airline has managed to sustain. The first of those is possible. The second and third require decisions that the current ownership structure has no obvious incentive to make.

India is now close enough to the scale in fleet, route network, and passenger volumes that the gap between the leadership it is producing domestically and the leadership it will need is becoming harder to paper over. Each successive foreign hire buys three to four years. It does not change the conditions underneath.

Closing Thoughts

The same dynamic operates every time a board reaches for a foreign CEO without asking why the domestic pipeline produced no equivalent candidate. The mandate for Indian leadership is real. The ecosystem that would make it achievable without a search abroad is not yet built.

Air India’s multi-brand architecture, under two years old as an operating reality, is the one structural development that could accelerate the pipeline. Executives currently managing the Air India and Air India Express network are accumulating cross-functional, multi-brand experience that no Indian aviation executive has had access to before. Whether they are given the operating autonomy to develop that experience into leadership capability, or whether decisions continue to concentrate at Tata Sons level with execution delegated downward, determines whether the 470-aircraft order book gets executed by domestically developed leadership in the 2030s or requires a third successive foreign CEO search.

India’s aircraft orders run through 2035 and beyond. The leadership pipeline that will execute them is being formed now, inside organisations that are at most twenty years old, governed by architectures that have interrupted the formation process every time it approached completion. Whether the incoming leadership at both carriers uses its tenure to develop the domestic layer beneath them, or whether decisions continue to concentrate at ownership level with execution delegated downward, determines whether the next CEO search looks different from the previous thirty years of them.

Author's Note and About Aeraltus

Aeraltus | Emerging Market Aviation Analysis.

Written by KS, Founding Analyst.

This analysis is built entirely from public sources. Aeraltus tracks leadership structure, fleet strategy, and talent development across emerging market aviation across India, Africa, ASEAN, to identify the structural gaps that practitioners with execution power can act on.

Aeraltus produces structural aviation analysis and intelligence on emerging markets across

Indian subcontinent, ASEAN and Africa. Custom aviation analysis is available for aviation

industry professionals that include institutional investors, airline strategy teams, lessors and

corporate development groups. If you want a tailored read on a specific carrier, route system, fleet decision or deal, using data that can’t be discussed publicly, Aeraltus runs

bespoke engagements alongside the published work. Contact info@aeraltus.com

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Sources

¹ Goh Choon Phong, CEO biography, Singapore Airlines corporate website, singaporeair.com. Joined 1990; appointed CEO 1 January 2011; roles included SVP Finance, SVP IT, President SIA Cargo, EVP Marketing.

² Carsten Spohr, CEO biography, Lufthansa Group corporate website. Joined Lufthansa 1994; appointed CEO 2014.

³ SOAS Development Leadership Dialogue, case study on Ethiopian Airlines institutional development. Ethiopian Aviation Academy established 1956; three consecutive internally developed CEOs — Girma Wake, Tewolde GebreMariam, Mesfin Tasew — cited in Ethiopian Airlines corporate press releases.

⁴ IndiGo CEO succession: Bruce Ashby (founding CEO), Aditya Ghosh (President 2008–2018), Gregory Taylor (2018–2019), Pieter Elbers (2022–2026), Willie Walsh (announced March 2026). Sources: Business Standard; Wikipedia, IndiGo article; BusinessToday, "Indian airlines' tryst with foreign CEOs," 7 April 2026.

⁵ Pieter Elbers appointed CEO September 2022 from KLM; resigned 10 March 2026 following December 2025 scheduling crisis. IndiGo named Willie Walsh as new CEO 31 March 2026. Wikipedia, IndiGo article (current).

⁶ Campbell Wilson appointed Air India CEO June 2022; stepped down April 2026. CAPA, "Air India, IndiGo CEOs are under the spotlight in early 2026," January 2026.

⁷ Jet Airways CEO sequence: Wolfgang Prock-Schauer (2003–2009), Nikos Kardassis, Vinay Dube (at collapse 2019). Indian Aerospace and Defence Bulletin, "Air India, IndiGo Appoint Foreigners As CEOs, Maintain Past Trend," 28 May 2022.

⁸ Aditya Ghosh departure from IndiGo, April 2018; InterGlobe Enterprises appointment rights. Reported in multiple outlets during 2019 Bhatia-Gangwal public dispute; shareholder agreement terms disclosed in SEBI filings.

⁹ IOSR Journal of Business Management, case study on Jet Airways governance and senior executive attrition, published 2021.

¹⁰ Ashok Gopinath, President, GMR Aero Technic, remarks on availability and retention of skilled aviation personnel, Wings India 2026.

¹² AME salary differential of 3 to 4 times between India and the Gulf. The Core (thecore.in), Indian business publication, September 2025.

¹³ Ethiopian Airlines founding 1945, operations 1946; Ethiopianisation policy. Ethiopian Airlines corporate history; Oxford Academic / SOAS Development Leadership Dialogue case study.

¹⁴ Air India post-privatisation transition to Tata Group completed January 2022. Ministry of Civil Aviation press releases; Tata Sons announcement.