Air India is already big. Now it needs to work

Tewolde Gebremariam has already spoken plainly to the Air India workforce. In his first townhall as incoming chief executive, according to Skift, he put the focus on three unglamorous things: safety, reliability and profit. After a period of aggressive growth in fleet, routes and headcount, the message is a clear change of gear.

The incoming CEO arrives with a track record that backs the talk. He comes from turning Ethiopian Airlines into one of the reference carriers on the African continent, with a declared obsession for operations and the bottom line. His reading of Air India's moment is simple: the airline has already bulked up, now it has to learn to run without falling over.

My take: little to argue with here. We have spent years watching airlines expand faster than their operations can handle, and passengers pay for it in delays, cancellations and reputation. That a CEO's first internal message is safety and reliability before new routes is, in my read, the most useful signal the market can get. The growth is done. Now collect on it.