Senior IAS officer of 1985-batch of Karnataka cadre, Pradeep Singh Kharola took the charge as chairman and managing director (CMD) of Air India. He took charge from Rajiv Bansal. Kharola has also served as managing director of Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd since February 2015.
Apart from that he has also worked in different departments of Karnataka which includes: chairman of Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation Ltd., principal secretary to the Karnataka chief minister.
Air India is going under loss for some time and government has also decided to start the process of selling stake in the airline. Now Pradeep will be having big responsibility to the fortunes of Air India.
Air India has a debt burden of more than Rs 50,000 crore over it, it had managed to eke out operational profit for the first time in a decade in 2015-16.