Gary Kingshott

When I call Gary Kingshott, this airline CEO is, appropriately enough, boarding a Jet Lite flight. He’s enroute to his home in Bombay, where he spends weekends; working weekdays at the Jet Lite offices in Delhi. We agree to meet at the old East Indian Bandra Gymkhana. It’s close to his Bandra home; here’s where he chills out on weekends. ”It reminds me of the footballs clubs in Australia”, he says, as we sit down a week later, to tea and to coffee. “It’s cool , there’s cricket on, you can get active with a pool upstairs and tennis and it gets very lively later on at night.”

He seems at home here, this tall, slim and formally dressed Australian. Naturally we talk turnaround. How does he do it ? And is that why he’s called Garry Slingshot Kingshott ? He smiles. “It’s a good story. It’s maybe because I was associated with a couple of turnarounds in Australia “. These include Ansett Airlines , travel agency Traveland and travel logistics company Showgroup. But Kingshott hasn’t always been an airline man – he has marketed sea food, beer and even Melbourne ( during his stint as CEO of the Melbourne Convention and Visitors Bureau.)

And now he’s been picked by Jet’s Naresh Goyal to head the Air Sahara turnaround team. ”Just fix it” was Goyal’s brief to Kingshott, on the morning of 18th April 2007, two days before the takeover papers for Air Sahara were to be signed. And fixing it is what Kingshott certainly seems to be doing. No mean task this. Air Sahara, as Kingshott says “was a mess; the airline (with 9 out of 24 planes grounded) was a mess; and the business (with huge financial losses) was a mess”.

Six months later, losses are coming down. “From 12 million US$ (Rs.47 crores) loss in April 2007 to under 5 million US$ (Rs. 19 crores) in October; we are on schedule to breakeven in December”, declares Kingshott. All this through a mix of cutting costs, adding on revenues, and synergizing with Jet Airways. Headcount has been reduced by a drastic 50% (from 4300 employees to approx. 2000) and per seat km costs slashed by 37%.

Things at the airline clearly, aren’t the same. Plus they’re no more stars! “Sahara did carry a lot of people for free”, shrugs Kingshott. “It’s amazing they’re no stars anymore” a young pilot told him. But Kingshott, who watches Bollywood on subtitled DVD and whose favorites include Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta in ‘Salaam Namaste’, was clearly unmoved “It’s how it should be”, he responded “you can’t run an airline and just keep giving tickets away”. The only starry connection Jet still has is with director of the Jet Air board Sharukh Khan. “I meet him at board meetings, and he has a view –and he knows where he can add value “, says Kingshott

So when did Kingshott first hear of Jet Airways? “When Naresh Goyal came onto my cell phone”, says Kingshott “I was sitting in my office in Melbourne , when my cell phone rang and Naresh came on and said ‘This is Naresh Goyal and I run Jet Airways’. I think I said ‘I’ve never heard of you and I’ve never heard of Jet airways’, which was true at the time. So he talked a little about Jet Airways and then he said ‘Would you be interested in coming to India? And how much do you want?’” 12 months and two meetings later, Kingshott did indeed come, to take over as Commercial Director in Jet Airways.

And was moving halfway across the hemispheres from Melbourne to Mumbai, something of a culture shock? “Not really”, says Kingshott, recalling his first impression of Mumbai off a flight in 2005 “ It felt like Bangkok circa 1985 – coming out of the aircraft into a hot and steamy night; dogs running around; lots of people ; taxi touts, all that sort of thing . It felt very familiar actually; it just felt like another large Asian city”

And now? Kingshott may work weekdays out of Delhi; but his heart is clearly (in more ways than one) in Mumbai. I grab a cue from Mario, the waiter at Bandra Gymkhana, and ask him about his girlfriend. “Jacqueline” he smiles,” loves Bombay and Bandra even more than me “The two Australians frequent Bandra’s many restaurants like hot favorite Soul Fry and China House, they shop (and even haggle) on Bandra’s Linking Road.

And then they’re the Bikes. Kingshott has an Enfield Bullet, and Jacqueline has both a bicycle and a Honda Activa. “It’s an Indian institution; the longest continuous production motorbike in the world and a wonderful piece of machinery”, Kingshott says of his bike. Besides Mumbai, he has also biked up the Ghats to Matheran with a group of 5 other bikers. For the rest he spends weekends at his Bandra apartment, a place he moved into over a year ago, after a short stint at Powai’s Hiranandani Gardens “It was a beautiful apartment”, he says of that first flat “but it didn’t feel like India, despite the lake it was very dusty, and then there were supermarkets with trolleys. It didn’t feel right you know “, he quips “where were the cows?” Bandra, with its greenery and its Melbourne like byways, obviously feels just right.

But come Monday morning and its back on the first flight to Delhi, where Kingshott scans daily revenue and load reports, and on time statistics to keep the airline up in the air. A 9 AM sms from Central Ops every morning keeps him informed of how well the network is doing that day, as Kingshott strategises on brand and business. “Someone told me that IBM had a motto in the 1980’s when it was struggling. ’Steal shamelessly’ it said, and that’s what I do. Why reinvent the wheel?” So Kingshott bases much of his modeling on the successful Quantas Jet Star partnership. The Australian full service carrier Qantas has made, in the last few years, an unusual success of low cost partner Jet Star. And now Jet Lite, along with Jet Airways is moving fast in that direction. Starting a week ago, hot meals for Jet Lite have been replaced by more economical boxed snacks. The crew for the Boeing 737’s will be reduced from 6 to 5, and will be now in a new uniform (“We won’t offend you by girls in short skirts flouncing up and down, unlike most of the other airlines, who all to me look like they came out of Europe somewhere –they’ve got girls running around in short skirts and tight blouses and things”). Jet Lite will begin operations to the Gulf, early next year, as soon as regulatory approvals come in, with fares, that Kingshott promises “will be competitive with low cost carriers”

And what of aviation itself and its issues of crowding and congestion?
“For most of last year we had an imbalance in the capacity and demand; excess capacity and less demand. That seems to be getting fixed in the latter half of this year. But now there are too many aircraft and not enough runaways. That too will get corrected but it’ll take a while longer “. 2-5 years is what Kingshott estimates. It’ll take 2 years to get the parallel runaway in Delhi operational, and to get the brands new airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad going (which will he feels be full almost as soon as they become operational) and to solve the Mumbai problem of repossessing land or alternatively setting up a Greenfield site in Navi Mumbai may take up to 5 years.

As for Kingshott, he’s already multitasking on his next project – an ocean rigged cutter yatch “ between 40 and 50 feet long that’s capable of ocean passage”. He plans to sail himself around the world in it. And yes, that is why he’s just ordered the book ‘How to sail Round the World ‘off Amazon.com. Really.

Mint Business Lounge December 2007