Ronojoy Dutta, popularly known as Rono Dutta, returns to the Indian aviation scene after a gap of over a decade to take over as IndiGo’s Chief Executive Officer. IndiGo also appointed M Damodaran as an Independent Non-Executive Director of the airline on Thursday.

Dutta brings a wealth of experience with him. He was the President of United Airlines, where he worked for around 20 years, holding senior leadership positions including Senior Vice-President- Planning, Senior Vice-President-Maintenance, Vice-President Finance and Vice-President Information Technology. He was the advisor to Air Canada and US Airways. Dutta was also engaged in long-term consulting contracts with Hawaiian Airlines and Air Canada.

His last association with Indian aviation industry was in the early 2000s when he worked as the President of Air Sahara for about two years. He is credited with establishing Hyderabad as a hub for the airline which saw Air Sahara increase the number of daily flights to close to 30 a day from just four earlier. He was also instrumental in getting American Airlines to agree to a code-share agreement with Air Sahara on the Delhi-Chicago route. It is perhaps this experience and expertise in the Indian aviation sector that IndiGo was looking for in its new CEO. Rahul Bhatia, the airline co-founder was named interim CEO when President Aditya Ghosh left in 2018.

“The decision to establish Hyderabad as a hub meant that travellers from east India were able to connect seamlessly to destinations in west India and also in the opposite direction,” recalls a former Air Sahara employee.

The man behind ‘Surprice’

Dutta also helped change Air Sahara’s image in the mind of international aircraft leasing companies and other international vendors, a former Air Sahara official said.

Dutta was also instrumental in launching Sahara’s Surprice package, which offered cheaper fares on a return ticket on the Delhi-Mumbai sector for as low as ₹4,444, provided the booking was made a month before travel. “The scheme is here to stay. However, there could be a shift in fares every season and this shift could either be upwards or even downwards,” Dutta had then said. Fifteen years later, low-cost airlines in India are still offering similar schemes.

While the formal announcement of Dutta joining IndiGo was made only on Thursday, he was very much part of the conference call that the IndiGo top brass had with financial analysts on Wednesday after announcing the airline’s December 2018 quarter results.

During the call, Dutta indicated that the airline would look at deploying Airbus A-321, which has a higher seating capacity, in airports facing slot constraints.