Air NZ's CEO appointment stirs racist backlash

Brian from Mount Roskill

The appointment of Nikhil Ravishankar as Air New Zealand's incoming chief executive caused a stir Thursday after major news outlets were forced to disable comments on their social media platforms due to receiving a barrage of racist remarks.
Ravishankar, chief digital officer of Air New Zealand, was tapped to lead the national carrier - one of the country's most respected corporate brands - after Greg Foran steps down in October.
However, the appointment of the Indian-origin insider to the airline's top job attracted a torrent of abuse online, with many zeroing in on Ravishankar's ethnicity.
The abuse forced the country's leading media organisations to restrict or disable the ability to comment on the social media posts announcing the news.
New Zealand Herald disabled comments on the Facebook post announcing the appointment "due to racist comments".
"We appreciate the high level of interest in this story but cannot safely moderate it at this time," the news outlet said in a post in the comment thread.
A spokesperson at New Zealand Herald later pointed RNZ towards the company's policy on social media comments.
"We want to foster a safe online community by reducing instances of hate, racism, abuse and misinformation," the media organisation's policy said.
"We welcome your feedback on articles but there has to be some parameters, and these are explained in our community house rules," it said.
"These clearly explain that we will not publish comments that are insulting, inflammatory or derogatory or those that spread misinformation or include personal attacks," it said.
"We cannot tolerate hate. We cannot tolerate abuse towards individuals in our stories or other commenters."
Radio New Zealand was also forced to disable comments on the social media post on Ravishankar's appointment.
"Under RNZ's comments policy, we will proactively disable comments on posts which may attract abusive or harmful comments or when resources are required elsewhere," a spokesperson for RNZ said.
"In this instance, the comments were disabled after our monitoring found racist comments," the spokesperson said.
"We want people to feel safe and respected on our community forums and will continue to proactively disable comments where necessary. We will not tolerate harmful communications."
TVNZ's 1News digital service took similar action in terms of restricting comments on the post.
"We received a large number of comments on this post," a spokesperson for 1News said.
"The vast majority were appropriate, however some were not," the spokesperson said.
"With our news team diverted to cover the tsunami event yesterday afternoon and evening we opted to turn comments off given sufficient monitoring wasn't possible."
Ravishankar holds bachelor's degrees in science and commerce from the University of Auckland after attending Mount Albert Grammar School in the country's largest city.
He sits on the board of New Zealand Asian Leaders and is an advisory committee member of The Auckland Blues Foundation.
Ravishankar has been with Air New Zealand for nearly five years and has been involved in strengthening its technology, loyalty and customer services.
Before joining the airline, Ravishankar was chief digital officer at Vector New Zealand, leading the company's digital and information technology function and its transformation programme from 2017.
He was previously managing director at Accenture in Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, and held technology strategy and transformation leadership roles at Spark New Zealand.
Ravishankar highlighted the deep legacy of the company he would soon lead in his first public comments after his appointment was announced.
"This airline is an institution with a deep legacy but also a fantastic future," Ravishankar said.
"It's a privilege to step into the CEO role and take on that responsibility for our people, our customers and our country.
"At the end of the day, we are a people business - purposeful, ambitious and deeply rooted in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I'm excited to help shape what this next stage of Air New Zealand looks like."
RNZ has approached Air NZ for comment.
Latest Census data in 2023 showed that the Indian population had leapfrogged the Chinese community to become the third-largest ethnic group in New Zealand.
A total of 292,092 people in the country identified as a member of the Indian community in the 2023 Census, an increase of 22 percent since 2018.
The New Zealand European ethnic group remained the largest, with a population of 3,099,858, followed by Māori with 887,493.
Auckland's Indian population grew by 13 percent between 2018 and 2023, rising from 154,824 in 2018 to 175,794 five years later.
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