Alitalia announced Thursday that it has appointed Cramer Ball to its board of directors and designated him to take over as the airline’s CEO from March 2016.
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The airline attributed his resignation to “family reasons”.
Mr. Naresh Goyal stated, “Cramer has, during his tenure, made a significant contribution in the journey to turnaround Jet Airways”.
Shetty has over 35 years of industry experience and has been with the airline for more than 19 years.
As CEO of Jet Airways Cramer Ball lead the Mumbai-based airline to reduce substantial losses and the airline is on track to turn a profit in the next year.
Meanwhile, following the resignation, which is effective from February 29, 2016, Jet Airways Whole-Time Director Gaurang Shetty will be taking over as the company’s acting CEO.
Ball had taken charge as CEO on 25 September 2014.
Ball’s exit came as a surprise as Jet had, under his watch and aided by lower fuel prices, swung back to net profit in the April-June quarter of this financial year. During May 2014, Jet’s chief executive officer and CFO, Ravishankar Gopalakrishnan, had left the firm.
Before joining Air Seychelles, Ball was regional general manager for Asia Pacific South and Australasia at Etihad Airways, which holds 40% equity in Air Seychelles.
” I’m honored to get had the opportunity to play with a role within the transformation of Jet Airways, because it goes towards long term sustainable success…”
Jet’s previous CEO Gary Kenneth Toomey stepped down from his position after serving for just seven months.
In an interview, Goyal, a former travel agent who built Jet Airways from scratch before selling a 24% stake in it to Etihad Airways in November 2013, had said he’s still the captain of the ship.
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Jet Airways Chief Executive Officer Cramer Ball resigned on Thursday, becoming the fourth CEO of the private carrier to have quit since April 2013 when it offloaded a part of stake to Abu Dhabi’s national airline Etihad.
