Campbell Wilson, CEO, Air India, during a virtual interaction today, spoke about Air India’s future market strategy and the role it will be playing in developing India into a world class aviation hub.

In terms of focusing on the cargo industry, he said, “It’s a very important area of focus, especially as we expand our wide-body international network there is a lot of belly hold capacity that will come with that. The growth in cargo is going to be as significant as the growth in passenger traffic. Our internal capabilities from sales, support, revenue management, pricing and the physical infrastructure to support transshipment as well as domestic cargo, are all very important streams. We have teams working on them as well. Suffice it to say that Air India has not fully tapped that opportunity previously, so it’s an area that has a lot of potential.”

He said, “We’ve really been working hard over the time since the airline was privatized, and certainly the 7 or 8 months since I came along to make this vision of creating a new era a reality. We have now recruited more than 1200 professionals to our ground staff cohort after 15 years of non-hiring phase. We have invested in platforms like Microsoft so that people have the required tools they need to collaborate and be productive. We have doubled our capacity, and we will double our revenue. We have invested 400 million dollars in refurbishing the interiors of our wide-body aircrafts.”

He added, “We are setting up a training academy in partnership with others in order to produce our own talent for not just India, but for the aviation ecosystem. As we know, India has a very attractive economic growth, very significant population, attractive demographics and a geography that is perfectly suitable for international aviation connectivity.”