It was in late January this year that Mark Sutch announced his decision to leave Cathay Pacific after heading various responsibilities at the Hong Kong-headquartered carrier in different cities for close to 20 years. But it was only a month later, towards the end of February, that he revealed his next job. He was to join CMA CGM Air Cargo, the brand new all-cargo airline of CMA CGM, the French shipping group, as its new chief commercial officer, to be based at the group headquarters in Marseille, the port city in southern France.
Sutch, based in Mumbai, was the regional general manager South Asia, Middle East & Africa for Cathay. Before he left Mumbai in mid-March for a short holiday with his family in London and later to Marseille, where he was to officially join CMA CGM Air Cargo on April 11, I joined him on a private flight from Juhu Aerodrome. Sutch is a trained pilot and holds a private pilot license. But he was flying an Indian registered aircraft for the first time. It was the Diamond DA42, a twin engine, four seat, propeller-driven airplane. He was flying south out of Mumbai and had the extra ordinary challenge of navigating his flight coordinating three radio frequencies.
When I met Sutch at Juhu Aerodrome, he told me again how excited he was to join the CMA CGM Air Cargo. He called it a “start-up cargo airline”. “I am looking forward to the challenges of building an all-cargo airline and the time is just right for having such an experience,” he told me before he took seat on the DA42 to fly over the city of Mumbai.
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