OBITUARY. Saroj Datta – the details man

When news of the demise of Jet Airways’ former Executive Director Saroj Datta in June reached Michael Mascarenhas, the former Managing Director of Air India immediately recollected the days when the two had started off their 46-year friendship.

Datta had joined Air India at a time when the airline attracted talent from the Ivy League universities. “Saroj was a product of Delhi School of Economics. He held his own and in a short time became a master at pool revenue sharing,” recalls Mascarenhas. Revenue sharing helps airlines to cover geographies where they don’t fly by routing traffic to their local peers.

Datta, who died in his Mumbai home at the age of 78, saw life in black and white. When differences with his seniors cropped on how to handle issues with a foreign airline, Datta quit the Maharaja in 1987.

Datta’s next career flight to Kuwait Airways was short-lived. “Unfortunately, Saddam Hussein did not know Saroj and invaded Kuwait,” says Mascarenhas, tongue firmly in cheek. “Saroj flew back to Mumbai without a job but within a few months joined Jet Airways,” adds the former Air India chief.

Paying tribute to his former colleague, Jet Airways’ Chairman Naresh Goyal in a statement said that Datta’s vision and commitment helped the company grow into India’s premier international airline. Old timers say that Datta worked on and drew up a concrete master plan, especially for international expansion, to make Jet the airline it is today.

Ravi Menon, Executive Director of aviation maintenance company Air Works, had known Datta since the 1970s and calls him his “go to” individual. “Once an engineer whom we had trained at enormous cost, left and joined Jet. Just a call to Datta, who was in Jet, was enough and the engineer was back.

"Thereafter, anyone joining Jet from Air Works was required to get a No Objection Certificate,” recounts Menon.

Kapil Kaul, Chief Executive, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation recollects an incident that reflected Datta’s passion for work. “We both were stuck in Hague during the 2010 volcanic ash clouds, which caused an aviation gridlock in Europe for 5-6 days. We couldn’t get back home. From Hague, both of us travelled throughout Europe standing in a train, before taking our flights from Rome to Doha. I marvelled at his stamina (Datta was about 74) as he was standing throughout the journey, and went without sleep for a few days. During our halts, I saw him working whenever he got a chance – accessing emails/ speaking to his colleagues and getting work done,” recalls Kaul.

Datta, who was popularly called SKD, was also known as much for his memory as for his temper. BusinessLine got a first-hand experience of this in the last week of December 1999. BusinessLine was doing a story on additional flights run by airlines to meet the holiday season demand. All airlines, except Jet, had shared details.

When Datta was contacted, he thundered, “You are calling me for this trivial matter which anyone in the company can tell you!” When it was explained that the journalist was against a tough deadline, Datta mellowed and said, “Okay you are just trying to do your job,” and reeled off details not only of the additional flights but also the timings and special fares. That was Saroj Datta --- a person of details willing to help as long as one was doing a job and not pulling rank or seeking a favour.

COMMENT NOW