Former Aer Lingus chief executive and head of IATA will take up role in the summer
Willie Walsh, right, and former IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers, at the IATA annual general meeting in New Delhi last year
Willie Walsh has been named the new chief executive of India’s IndiGo airline, following the fiasco in which thousands of its flights were cancelled last December.
This led to the resignation earlier this month of IndiGo’s chief executive Pieter Elbers.
Mr Walsh, a former Aer Lingus chief executive who is head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), is expected to take up the role at the Indian airline this summer. His current term as director general of IATA ends on July 31.
IndiGo is India’s biggest airline and has a market share of about 65pc in the country. It operates some 2,200 flights a day. It has more than 400 jets in its fleet and services 45 international destinations alongside its domestic routes.
Mr Elbers abruptly stepped down as CEO following scrutiny over the carrier’s failure to plan properly for pilot rest and duty rules, which led to mass flight cancellations in December.
Regulators later reprimanded Mr Elbers for “inadequate overall oversight of flight operations and crisis management”.
Mr Walsh (64) went on to head British Airways after he left Aer Lingus, and then created the International Airlines Group (IAG), which now includes the Irish carrier, as well as Iberia and the Spanish low-cost carrier Vueling.
He had joined Aer Lingus straight from school, as a cadet pilot. In his early career Mr Walsh was a vocal trade unionist, even taking part in strike action at Aer Lingus in 1985, and was elected as a union representative at the carrier. He became one of its youngest ever captains, in 1990
He was appointed chief executive in 2001 – the year of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Mr Walsh said last year that the next IATA annual general meeting, in Rio de Janeiro, would be his last, but that he might stay at the organisation until 2027 at the latest.
Currently the chairman of Irish tech firm CarTrawler, he said in an interview with the Irish Independent last year that he might join the board of one airline after he retires from IATA.
“My latest idea is to buy a vineyard in Tuscany and produce wine that I will drink myself,” he added at the time. “I love wine and I love Italian wine. It’ll be something small and manageable. I’m not going to try and compete with the wine producers.”
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