Indigo names IIT, United Airlines alumnus Ronojoy Dutta as CEO

New Delhi, Jan 27: InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, which runs IndiGo, India's largest airline in terms of passengers carried, on Thursday named industry veteran Ronojoy Dutta as chief executive officer (CEO).

Dutta's appointment comes about nine months after IndiGo's president and whole-time director Aditya Ghosh, who managed the day-to-day operations at the airline, announced his decision to quit.

Ghosh's resignation was announced by IndiGo in April last year, following which the airline's co-founder Rahul Bhatia served as the interim CEO. Dutta had been hired as a principal consultant last year.

After Ghosh's exit, industry experts said that his ideal replacement would be someone with extensive international experience and one who could drive and grow the international operations of the airline.

About Ronojoy Dutta:
Brought up in Shillong, Meghalaya, in India's northeast, Dutta is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

He joined United Airlines in the US in 1984 and went on to serve as its chairman between 1999 and 2001. Indeed, he was only the second Indian to head an American airline - the first, none other than IndiGo co-founder Rakesh Gangwal, who was CEO and chairman of US Airways between 1998 to 2001 (Gangwal also worked at United between 1984 and 1994 - his time there coincided with Dutta's).

On September 11, 2001, hijackers crashed a United flight into the World Trade Center in New York and another in Pennsylvania.

The airline was already making losses, and 9/11 dealt the final blow. Passenger traffic dropped in the months following the attack. In 2002, United filed for bankruptcy with nearly $1 billion in debt. Dutta was forced to quit with a $1.6 million payout.

He returned to India as an advisor to Air Sahara in 2004, and was appointed CEO after a few months. The airline had then just launched its international route from Chennai to Colombo, and Dutta helmed its rapid expansion, registering a 35% annual growth in revenue. He quit the company after Air Sahara was bought out by Jet Airways, the country's oldest private airline.