After decades of decline, Air India is betting billions on a comeback

Air India was once so renowned for its service that Singapore’s founding statesman Lee Kuan Yew used the airline as a blueprint for launching the city-state’s own flag carrier in the early 1970s. In recent decades, India’s national airline came to be seen as a cautionary tale of decline as it racked up billions of dollars in losses and battled a reputation for tardiness and poor service. When the Tata Group bought the company in October 2021, returning control to the wealthy Tata family after decades of state ownership, CEO Natarajan Chandrasekaran laid out a clear objective: “To build a world-class airline”. Tasked with leading this mission is Air India CEO Campbell Wilson, who was recruited from Singapore’s low-cost airline Scoot in 2022 to turn around the carrier, founded in 1932 by French-Indian aviator entrepreneur JRD Tata. “Standards have slipped considerably over the years,” Wilson told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview. But Wilson is adamant that “the journey to restoring Air India to its former glory is well under way” under a five-year turnaround plan unveiled last year.<br/>