Meet Air India Chief Ashwani Lohani Who Takes On Rude MPs And Stands Up For His Employees

Ashwani Lohani is not just a man of grit. He’s a man with a scarily impressive resume. For starters, he is featured in the Limca Book Of Records for having four engineering degrees – one each in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering and Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering.

He completed the four degrees in four years. Next, he also holds a Guinness World Record for successfully for running the Fairy Queen Express, world’s oldest steam locomotive engine. No wonder he was then chosen to turn around the fortunes of the ailing national carrier Air India.

Looks like he can.

He’s a firm believer in the ‘Employee First’ motto. And that’s why he stood up strongly for the 60-year-old AI employee who was slapped by Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad.

Banning politicians from flying is almost unheard of. And if the politician is from a party like Shiv Sena, everyone expects the official to give in, in a few days.

But not Ashwani Lohani.

 

And the Ravindra Gaikwad incident was not the first time Lohani stood up for his employees. In 2015, he directed AI to lodge a complaint against Congress MP Mithun Reddy. The MP had slapped the station manager at the Tirupati airport.

The boarding gate was closed and that’s why the Congress MP was not allowed to board the flight and neither were his relatives. Mithun Reddy then slapped the airport’s station manager in anger.

The police arrested the MP after AI lodged a complained against him.

Lohani is known to be a man of principles. He is also known to be incorruptible.

 

Every Air India executive gets a corporate credit card and free flights. Lohani has not used both of them even once, since the time he took over as the Managing Director. He always pays for his ticket from his pocket.

“He has not taken a free ticket either for himself or his family. He continues to travel by railways.”

His predecessors misused these perks to a great extent. That’s exactly what we see even in the politicians when they misuse taxpayers’ money for their own selfish reasons.

No wonder he has stood up against this VIP culture because he is completely against it by principle. If he was a corrupt person, he would have empathised with the MP or even taken some money to shut up.

But he didn’t.

No wonder he has been picked by Narendra Modi to turn the fortunes of Air India around.

Source – The Outlook, Hindustan Times