Dismissed Air Malta chief operations officer sought job at Air India

Dismissed yesterday from his post of Chief Operations officer, Canadian national Brock Freisen has attended an interview to fill the post of COO at Air India.

24 November 2010, 12:00am
by Karl Stagno-Navarra

2 min read

MaltaToday is reliably informed that Brock Freisen is among three who were “interviewed” last March for the post at Air India together with Vice President of flight operations in Jet Airways Gustav Baldauf, and senior director of marketing in Air Canada George Reeleder.

An Indian Civil Aviation official has reported that “a lot of due diligence has being carried out on the final selection.”

National Aviation company of India Ltd (NACIL), the holding company formed after the marger of Indian airlines and Air India in 2007, was to choose the COO, however it remains unknown what decision has been taken by Air India regarding Brock Freisen.

The Air India management comprising civil aviation secretary M Madhavan Nambiar and Air India CMD Arvind Jadhav along with industrialist Sajjan Jindal, Uday Kotak and Anand Mahindra conducted the interview of the three candidates.

Brock Freisen arrived at Air Malta in 2006 and was summoned to the Chairman’s office yesterday afternoon, where he was dismissed on long leave.

According to senior Air Malta sources, Brock Freisen still had a year and a half to go before ending his well remunerated contract with the national airline.

It remains unknown what agreement has been reached with Freisen, and how much will his dismissal cost Air Malta.

Meanwhile, former EasyJet chief financial controller Robert Palmer, who initially was engaged by government to look into the restructuring needed at Air Malta has immediately taken over as Chief Operations Officer at the national Airline.

Palmer is reportedly in constant liason with Chairman Sonny Portelli and taking drastic decisions on the airline’s expenditure.

All levels of management have been reportedly stripped of all authority from approving expenditure and have been given strict instructions to pass on everything to the Ernst & Young team that are hands on every department of Air Malta.

E&Y restructuring expert Alan Hudson who is compiling the airline’s restructuring report for government has meanwhile refused to give comments to the media and has referred all questions to be answered by Air Malta’s public relations office.

More from Karl Stagno-Navarra

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The GWU is already dead and buried at Air Malta. They have seen other unions at Air Malta getting wage increases for their members and they did nothing and stayed asleep. The GWU are aware that there were certain General Managers who are blue eyed boys and who were very close to Dr Friesen and ex Chairman Lawrence Zammit that were given over Euro 1000 monthly wage increase in their basic wages as of May 2010. In June 2010 they received a performance bonus of over Euro7000. This when Air Malta was drowning u ghal haddiema l- ohra lanqas kien hemm il- frak tal- mejda wara 7 snin wage freeze.!!!!! Wake up mir raqda tal GWU and check this out

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One of the rats who knew what was happening and tried to get another job before abandoning the sinking ship. Air India should be on their guard because his credentials show that he is not up to the job as evidenced by his failure at Air Malta.

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bolar500 the GWU was more responsible and was trying to help the company in its financial difficulties for the best of the workers. However, some other classes of workers know that it would be easy for them to get a job so their unions didn't really care about the rest of the workers.

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@bolar500 you have it wrong. My job is on the line and that is because unscrupolous groups bled the company dry. Sure, the RJs and Azzurrair did damage, but the recent losses are not atributed to them but to malpractices done, and still being done. If these unions are checked; if their agreements are nullified; if the astronomic wages of top managment, from GMs upwards are revised; if airmalta gets paid for its services; if the free tickets given to all and sundry are removed; if subsidies are not given to airlines competing directly on the core routes; if Airmalta is permitted to stop operating unprofitable routes; if services farmed out (while the employees who used to do them are retained) are bought back to the company; if the millions spend on senseless advertising are reined in; if the busines model, especially the comercial model is revised; if..if..if.. there would be no need for job shedding. Job shedding is not the answer..see Luxair..its wrong work practices and irresponsable spending which is killing Airmalta.

Jeffrey Grech •

@ employee Why are you blaming the other unions for the GWU's failure to secure an agreement when all the others did? The other unions did their job. The GWU did not. So go to Tony Zarb and ask him why. Your comments are destructive and this is the what the government wants - division among the employees. Tpaxxihx..!!

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heard today in the news : 71 captains of Airmalta and 4 members of the senior staff are paid MORE THAN THE PRESIDENT OF MALTA. The jigsaw is taking shape...see my comments below and put two and two together, dear Joe public

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this is the first step. Now how about taking a look at the agreements reached with the unions of pilots, cabin crews and engineers ? isn't it queer that they are nowhere to be seen, and refuse all invitations to appear on the media ? it is all very well to talk of a common front now, but where were they when the MOU expired, and they did separate agreements leaving the GWU, who has the most members in the company, to face the company alone ? now since only GWU members are the only ones with the wages frozen for 7 years, will they be the only ones to carry the can ? and for the hundrieth time, is it true that GMs had a wage increase of 1000 euros per month, just 2 or 3 months ago ? surely everyone knew about the state of the company then.