Officials said the Union Home Ministry is examining the application for grant of security clearance to Air India’s designated chief executive officer Campbell Wilson and it will be cleared after thorough background checks are completed. Tata Sons, which took over the loss-making airline from the government on January 27 this year, announced Wilson’s appointment on May 12. The application for security clearance for Air India’s nominee Campbell Wilson is under consideration and approval will happen once the background check is completed, officials close to the issue said.
Wilson was the CEO of Scooter Air, a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines is a joint venture partner of the Tata Group in full-service carrier Vistara. Industry sources said that since security clearance is taking time, Wilson is yet to formally take charge of Air India.
A query sent to Air India on Wilson’s security clearance and when he is expected to officially join the airline did not elicit any response. Weeks after taking over the carrier, Tata Sons on February 14 named former Turkish Airlines chairman Lyker I as the MD and CEO of Air India.
However, Ayci, a Turkish citizen who was to take office on April 1, refused to join the group amid concerns in some quarters over his alleged close ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan had taken an anti-India stand on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir on several occasions in the past. Under government rules, the approval of the Ministry of Home Affairs is mandatory for appointment of key personnel in private companies, which also include foreign nationals.
In a message to Air India employees on June 20, Wilson said the airline’s “best of years are yet to come” and the journey to make it a world-class airline will require efforts “big and small, easy and difficult”.
An aviation industry veteran with over 26 years of experience, Wilson started in New Zealand in 1996 as a management trainee with Singapore Airlines. He worked for the carrier in Canada, Hong Kong and Japan before returning to Singapore in 2011. CEO of Scoot, which he led until 2016.
He then served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Singapore Airlines, where he served as CEO of Pricing, Distribution, E-commerce, Merchandising, Brand and Marketing, Global Sales and Airline, before returning for a second term. Oversight of foreign offices. Scooty in April 2020.
Through a competitive bidding process, the government in October last year sold Air India to Tata Sons subsidiary Tales Pvt Ltd for Rs 18,000 crore. Air India was started by the Tata Group in 1932 and the carrier was nationalized in 1953.