CHICAGO: The new assignments for Nakul Singh Chand, coming from New Delhi as Midwest Manager for Air India, and Rishikant Singh moving up to new assignment in New York as Regional Manager America could not have been better timed as both are greeted with a code-sharing partnership with Air Canada.
Air India now has service to India from Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, St. Johns, Toronto and Vancouver. All flights to Europe and the Far East are non-stop on Air Canada aircraft, and then via continuing service on Air India Boeing 777s or 787 Dreamliners to India. From the Air India Delhi hub, one can make seamless connections to over 50 other cities across India, according to Nakul Chand.
In a talk to this paper, Nakul Chand said that with a non-stop daily flight from Chicago to New Delhi that offered seamless connections to all major cities in the Indian sub-continent, Air India held an unbeatable edge over the competitors.
Etihaad was among the big challengers along with American Airlines. Whilst American Airlines has stopped flying non-stop to India, Etihaad operates its flight with a stopover in the Middle East. Recent entrants in this market are Qatar and Emirates. Travel agents share that some of the competing carriers try to lure the passengers by offering cheaper fares and attractive incentives. However, Air India is able to fend off competition by offering competitive fares.
According to Nakul Chand the Air India flight occupancy is well maintained and with its quality services and choices of food for traveling public, it will continue to have an edge over the rivals.
Nakul Singh Chand, an MBA-Marketing, joined Air India 27 years ago in Mumbai in 1987 and oversaw the entire cargo export activities at the International Airport at Mumbai for four years at an operational level. Besides Air India’s own flights, he also supervised the cargo operations of over 20 foreign airlines that were handled by Air India.
From 1991-2003 he headed the Anand and Vadodara stations of Air India in Gujarat registering blistering revenue growth and set sales records despite stiff competition from numerous carriers.
From 2003-2005, he was heading the Marketing, Pricing and special promotions division of Commercial HQ at Mumbai for the Asia Pacific region. This required monitoring of performance of the stations in the region, activities of competitors, capacity deployment, and the timely launch of special fares and incentives to compete favorably.
On a challenging overseas assignment as Manager-Australia and Fiji from 2005-2009, he engineered a sales and marketing coup by increasing revenues threefold with his hard work and dedication. New code shares with Malaysia Airlines between Kuala Lumpur and Melbourne, and multiple daily codeshare operations with Singapore Airlines from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to India via Singapore were charted successfully during his tenure.
Chand has worked in Air India HQ in Mumbai and Delhi with the Executive Director – Sales & Marketing of the Commercial Dept for over five years before taking charge as Manager – Midwest. He succeeds Rishikant Singh who was picked for the new assignment in New York as Regional Manager – Americas.
Abdul Siddiqui
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