Air India's new chief executive says he wants the loss-making carrier to turn profitable faster than its shareholders do — and he has a three-part plan to get there. "I am more impatient than shareholders," Tewolde Gebremariam, CEO and Managing Director, told the Aviation India and South Asia 2026 conference in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Gebremariam, who officially took charge of the Tata Group-owned airline in October, laid out a strategy built on cost reduction, wide-body fleet expansion and a rebalanced international network. His comments were reported by news agency PTI.

It's a candid admission of where the airline stands. Profitability, he acknowledged, remains a concern. Air India is still loss-making and in the middle of what it calls an ambitious transformation, and the CEO isn't pretending otherwise.

What did the CEO actually say?

Two things stand out from his remarks. First, the impatience quote — a deliberate signal that management feels the pressure, and then some. Second, a blunt assessment of the airline's competitive position.

"Air India has been punching below its weight and that will change," Gebremariam said at the conference.

That's the framing for everything else. An airline that once dominated Indian long-haul flying has watched its overseas market share erode, and the CEO wants it back. The strategy focuses on improving operational efficiency and cutting costs while still pursuing growth — a balancing act that most turnarounds get wrong.

What is the turnaround strategy?

The plan, as outlined in New Delhi, has several moving parts:

• Cost reduction. Gebremariam said the airline is working on reducing costs across its business, with efficiency and cost control placed at the centre of the push toward financial sustainability.
• More wide-body aircraft. The CEO described "huge growth opportunities" and said Air India would seek to increase its order for wide-body jets — the long-range planes that carry most international traffic.
• Network rebalancing. The airline will restructure its overseas flight network, shifting capacity to where it can win back international market share.
• A third hub. Air India is considering Bengaluru as a third major airport hub alongside Delhi and Mumbai, a move designed to improve network efficiency and support its international expansion.

The hub decision matters. Delhi and Mumbai have traditionally anchored the carrier's long-haul operations, and adding Bengaluru would give it a southern gateway — a structural change, not just a scheduling tweak.

What's standing in the way?

The headwinds are real. The most concrete one is geography: the closure of Pakistan's airspace, which has affected Air India's international operations by forcing longer flight routes on key corridors. Fuel burn goes up. Costs go up. Efficiency — the CEO's stated priority — gets harder to deliver.

Then there's the financial starting point. The airline remains loss-making, and Gebremariam acknowledged that profitability is still a concern even as he defended the pace of change. The transformation, in his telling, is about pairing discipline with ambition: control costs, fly bigger planes to more destinations, and rebuild the overseas franchise.

Why the wide-body bet matters

Wide-body aircraft are the currency of long-haul aviation. An airline that wants market share on international routes needs them, and Gebremariam's signal that Air India will increase its existing order suggests he sees demand the current fleet can't capture.

Combine that with a third hub and a rebalanced network, and the outline of a stronger international carrier emerges. Whether it translates into profits is the question shareholders — and, by his own account, an impatient CEO — are asking.

By Priya Raman