Sunil Kumar Nagdawne Takes Charge as CMD of Pawan Hans
Sunil Kumar Nagdawne has taken charge as Chairman and Managing Director of Pawan Hans, India's principal helicopter services PSU, on Friday.
Sunil Kumar Nagdawne took charge as Chairman and Managing Director of Pawan Hans Limited on Friday. He now runs India's principal helicopter services provider, a Mini Ratna company that has flown routes to remote and hill regions since 1985.
Pawan Hans connects places fixed-wing aircraft cannot reach — hill districts, offshore oil installations, and disaster-hit areas during relief operations. The CMD's job covers fleet operations, regulatory compliance and, most pressingly, financial turnaround. The company's fleet has aged, forcing periodic service suspensions on safety grounds, and its revenue depends heavily on state government contracts for hill connectivity that vary from year to year.
Nagdawne comes from Indian Oil Corporation, where he was General Manager (Aviation), handling fuel operations and airport infrastructure projects — work that involved regular coordination with airport operators and regulators on fuel storage and supply. He is an engineering graduate from NIT Bhopal, holds an MBA from NMIMS Mumbai, and has completed executive programmes at IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta.
He held the General Manager (Aviation) post at Indian Oil for several years before this move — his most recent assignment there centred on the company's aviation fuel and airport infrastructure operations.
His background is in fuel and infrastructure, not helicopter operations, which is the company's core business. Pawan Hans has repeatedly had to suspend routes in hill states because of fleet-availability problems and rising costs — the specific challenge Nagdawne now inherits.
As CMD, he will need to address the ageing fleet, push through fresh helicopter procurement to replace aircraft grounded for safety or maintenance reasons, and stabilise finances at a company that has posted losses in several recent years despite steady demand from hill states and offshore oil-and-gas contracts.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation issued the appointment order confirming his tenure at the company.
