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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Satish C. Shah who wrote (4123)	4/25/1999 12:53:00 AM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Indian CEO pilots US Airways to dizzy heights Hi Satish! Dylan Thomas? Now he knows how to write.Thanks for the link. Here is an article about CEO of U.S Air Rakesh Gangwal. ==================== Arthur J Pais In a dramatic turnaround, US Airways (formerly US Air), one of the most chronically ill aviation outfits in the United States till about three years ago, zoomed into the first place (more of the ranking later). The driving force behind the airline is an Indian, Rakesh Gangwal, president and chief executive officer, US Airways. A year back, the airline had to ground its operations in the wake of a quality survey of ten major American airlines including itself. Southwest Airlines which was placed first in the 1997 survey, dropped to fifth place. The survey was confined to US airlines with revenues of over $1billion. The survey released on April 19 was conducted by Dean Headley, associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University in Kansas, and Brent Bowen, director of the Aviation Institute at the University of Nebraska. They used over 12 criteria for ranking 1998 airline quality including the handling of passenger baggage. They also drew information from government reports and other information available to the public. "The recognition of US Airways as the top-rated airline in the United States by the Airline Quality Rating study is a clear acknowledgement of the hard work by the entire family of US Airways employees," said Gangwal. He had announced two years ago that unless US Airways became a carrier of choice, rather than a carrier of convenience, it will find it difficult to earn substantial profit. US Airways's annual revenues were $ 7.5 billion in 1995 and $ 8.7 billion in 1998. Its passenger load factor: 64.7 per cent in 1995 and 72.7 per cent in 1998. The operating profit shot up from $ 322 million in 1995 to $ 1.01 billion in 1998. The total debt of the company has been reduced from $ 2.8 billion in 1995 to $2 billion last year, in spite of a huge buying spree. One of the key factors that took US Airways to the top was its relatively low claim of denied boarding -- when a ticketed passenger is denied a seat on a full aircraft -- and the minimal mishandling of bags. US Airways Inc is the main operating arm of US Airways Group. With almost 400 aircraft, US Airways Inc operates more than 2,100 flights daily, carrying an average of more than 155,000 passengers. 'Today, US Airways is sparring with the big boys,' noted BusinessWeek recently. 'It has trans-Atlantic reach and fills up some of the most modern craft in the skies. And after years of hefty losses, earnings have once again taken off. And though US Airways shares, like those of all other airlines, have been hammered recently by fears of recession, they have held up better than those of rivals.' Gangwal, 45, is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology and has a Masters in Business Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining US Airways as president and chief operating officer in February 1996, he was executive vice-president (planning) and development at Air France and a senior officer at United Airlines. He is credited -- along with his mentor and company chairman Stephen Wolf, 57 -- with cutting costs at US Airways, improving the overall morale, and going aggressively after new routes. Their partnership started seven years ago when Wolf put Gangwal in charge of planning for United.------->continued..... 216.32.165.70