Rono Dutta, Air Sahara president

New Delhi : When Air Sahara president Rono Dutta announced Hyderabad as the hub for domestic and overseas operations, he was merely operationalizing a “strategy” to make the 11-year-old old private carrier a truly global airline.

The hub and spoke operations is just one of the many initiatives the former president of the world’s largest carrier, United Airlines, has charted for Air Sahara, which Dutta joined in July. His eyes today are trained on flying the third-largest domestic carrier to not only some member countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations, but also Europe, West Asia and the U.S.

“The day the Indian government gives us permission, we will take just four months to start operations to Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong,” says the 53-year old business administration graduate from Harvard.

“We are already in talks with airport administrations in these countries for landing rights. We need the four-month lead to build up our sales books,” Dutta, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kharagpur, told Indo-Asian News Service. “In fact, we have already signed agreements to purchase two Boeing 737-700s and one 737-300. We will buy three more aircraft by the end of 2005. That should put us in a comfortable position for our overseas operations.”

Air Sahara currently flies overseas to Sri Lanka and Nepal, besides serving 24 destinations within India with 121 daily flights, using a fleet of 20 aircraft.

London is another sector that is high on Dutta’s list of priorities. “At present there are 21 bilateral slots for Indian carriers to Britain. How the government will distribute it among existing carriers is not known yet. But we are ready.”

Dutta, who started his career in India with Voltas in 1972 after a degree in engineering from IIT, went to Harvard in 1980 for a master’s degree in business administration. In the U.S., he joined United Airlines in 1985 where he worked in almost all major departments after a stint with strategy and technology consulting firm Booze Allan and Hamilton in Chicago.

In 1999, he was named president of United Airlines to become the second Indian American to head a U.S. carrier –– Dutta’s former colleague at United Airlines and fellow alumnus from IIT Kharagpur, Rakesh Gangwal, was already president of rival U.S. Airways. As Dutta recalls, the going was tough for the global aviation sector in 1999, which was further exacerbated by the Sept. 11 terror attacks. After trying to set right the ailing carrier, he quit in September 2002. But that did not stop him from continuing to be at the helm of affairs in the global aviation sector, even as he started looking for opportunities in India.

“The growth in the Indian aviation sector has high –– it continues to grow at 15-20 percent. I saw a potential in bringing new strategies to Indian aviation. I was, in fact, talking about the concept of a hub in India seven years ago.”

During the interim period between September 2002 and July this year, Dutta helped RSA Pension Fund to acquire the bankrupt U.S. Airways, which Gangwal had left in November 2001.

Dutta was also the key strategist in the acquisition of Air Canada by Cerberus Equity. Besides, he designed a new business model for Hawaiian Airlines and helped British carrier Virgin Atlantic chart its U.S. operations.

“Yet, I was keen on doing something in India,” says Dutta who travels often to the U.S. to visit his wife and three children –– two sons who study at Yale in New Haven and Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., and daughter who is in the seventh grade.

“In America, it would have been another assignment with another airline, but here in India I thought my experience could come in handy.”