GoAir loses seven top executives in three months as two more senior executives quit

Resignation of senior executives at the Wadia Group-promoted airline, GoAir, continues, with two more executives – a director and deputy director of flight training – resigning on Thursday, sources told FE. Both these executives resigned within three months of joining the airline.

The resignations happened reportedly due to differences between Nandkumar Ramaswami, director, flight operations training at GoAir, and the management over the number of pilots per aircraft. While keeping the flight duty time limitation (FDTL) regulation under consideration, Ramaswami proposed that seven pilots per aircraft are needed to run operations safely and smoothly, but the management proposed that number to be 4.5 per aircraft, below the industry average.
The resignation of Kirti Veluri, deputy general manager, flight training, followed soon after Ramaswami resigned, sources indicate.
When contacted, a GoAir spokesperson said, “GoAir prides itself in maintaining and encouraging high standards of performance across levels. As per our internal standards and measures on review, some executives were found wanting on critical performance parameters and were asked to be relieved of their duties with due process. Attrition is an industry-wide phenomenon. People leave organisations because of their own personal or professional reasons.”

An independent agency too proposed that GoAir with its current aircraft rotation patterns needs 6.5-7 pilots per aircraft. GoAir, according to industry sources, has about 500 pilots, of which approximately 207 are captains,196 first officers and under 132 first officers under training.

“GoAir has a very inefficient operating pattern due to which crew numbers needed at the airline are high. The airline put a freeze on training pilots and also on trainers last year, and is now facing a crunch. It basically indicates poor planning,” a source close to the development said.
Over the past three months, seven top level executives resigned from GoAir, including its chief operating officer, expat Jyri Strandman, who quit in October and left the airline without fully servicing his notice period.

GoAir operates 220 daily flights with 41 aircraft, indicative of relatively lower levels of aircraft utilisation. It announced its international destinations to Male and Phuket in October. It flies to 23 destinations on its domestic and international network.