While all of this was going on for years, the HR was apparently busy worrying about a coffee shop design, and CEO Antonoaldo Neves was busy choosing which Ferrari to buy his daughter.
How does the HR Director still shamelessly sit in that position while the experiences of employees are now being talked about not just within Etihad, not just in the UAE, but across the whole airline industry? The fact that some narcissistic sociopath was allowed to accumulate this much power is on you. It was your JOB to intervene. You had the complaints. You had the evidence. You knew what was going on and did nothing. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
Frankly, you’re lucky this hasn’t blown up beyond industry forums yet. The things being discussed here could very easily attract international media attention. This leadership came dangerously close to destroying the company’s reputation and somehow nobody seems to realise how loudly the alarm bells are ringing. And it’s not just one person. Look at how many of the same senior names keep coming up in these comments: Javier Alija, Jyotsna Kaur Chowdhry, Danielle Ryan, Jagdish Shrimani, Ruaraidh Smeaton, Adria Rabassa, Wei Jin… At what point does leadership stop dismissing this as noise and start asking why the same names and the same allegations keep surfacing again and again? Does someone seriously need to take it to social media and turn this into a full blown PR crisis before you finally learn your lesson?
Can someone seriously explain this? Or can the people themselves come clean and tell us what exactly was going on? Why were the same select few men, whose main thing in common is being young and having a pretty face, constantly accompanying Arik on pointless bizarre work trips around the world that had nothing to do with their actual roles?? What exactly was their role on these trips? And it wasn’t just these trips. Why were the same people also showing up at senior level events they had no obvious reason to attend, as well as private off the clock meetups? Seriously someone make it make sense.
And honestly I can understand some young guy leaving their country, moving to the UAE, getting an opportunity to move into a corporate role and trying to build a life and career for themselves. You do what you gotta do, right? If a powerful senior executive is clearly favouring you, I can see why you’d take advantage of that. But let’s not pretend you weren’t benefiting from it. If Arik hadn’t been shown the door you’d probably still be enjoying all those perks or maybe climbing the ladder like some others did. So as for everyone throwing around the word “grooming,” sorry but we’re not talking about a 19 year old kid here. A grown man over 30 knows perfectly well what he’s doing.
It’s hilarious that Arik Kumar has apparently spent the last few weeks consulting half of his DRs, strategising, and coaching them on what to say in case they get called for interviews. He’s reportedly been spending half his day doing this with a few equally clueless DRs as if they can help him.
The funniest part? They keep reassuring him, saying everything will be fine and telling him not to worry. Hhhhh, little do they seem to understand how serious the situation actually is.
Honestly, we should thank Arik’s DRs for keeping him comfortable with their constant reassurances. They’re practically convincing him that everything is under control while the situation continues to unfold.
As if this bunch of helpless, useless DRs can somehow perform a miracle and magically make the whole thing disappear. Hhhhh. What a circus. The idiots are reassuring the man instead of helping him face reality.
Jurrian SVP Network Planning and his direct reports better have adequate answers ready because a lot of queries are headed his way concerning the choice of new routes in 2025/26 along with the frequency increases.
Javier is a lost cause altogether now. He's been around for nearly a decade at Etihad and will be out in January.
Looking at the sheer volume of comments here, I wonder if Arik Kumar has actually stopped to read them and ask himself one simple question: “What have I done?”
Dude, you got almost everything wrong. You thought yelling at and intimidating your own people was acceptable, that you could treat them however you wanted without consequences. Well, look where that attitude has landed you.
You made yourself untouchable in your own mind, Arik. Now you’re left facing the consequences, wondering where all that loyalty went. You’ve become yesterday’s news — just another Labubu nobody seems to care about anymore.
Funny how Kumar’s LinkedIn (fake) farewell post included people who had left the department a year earlier, Thibaut Gardien, for example
Kumar, you still think you’re the smartest in the room? Come on!
He referenced about how Etihad went from US$3b in annual revenue to US$10b during his tenure. That is naturally possible as the fleet size increased from 71 to 127 planes +80% with majority of those incremental jets being wide bodies.
He never did realize that many of us could read him like a book after his first year was completed. We had to play along as some of us had families to manage in UAE along with kids in school. He knew that point very well and took full emotional advantage over it.
He has no idea how much damage he has done to the Etihad employee morale along with his VP inner circle members and nor does he care. He has certain KPI targets embedded in his contract to achieve at the end of each year with a big bonus attached to it if realized. That is all what he and CEO care about at the end of the day to achieve by hook or crook !
We expect a full fledged VP/Director level clean up operation to start from December onwards and a gradual reset effective February 2027 to re-energize the airline on a sustainable way forward.
Thank God we can finally open LinkedIn in peace without having to endure another one of Arik Kumar’s pathetic posts.
“We at Etihad…”
“At Etihad…”
“Thanks to my leadership team…”
Kumar was so obsessed with LinkedIn that even corporate communications apparently had to wait for his posts before publishing anything themselves. Imagine turning LinkedIn into your personal stage and treating corporate communications as if they need your permission to speak first.
Welcome back, LinkedIn! We missed you so much.
It was purely done for optics, get maximum number of likes on his posts and a whole lot of self praise by his sheepish followers in the comments section to make him feel immortal.
More importantly he gave the impression to the outside world that he actually cared for his department staff members which is obviously not the case one bit. It has been now three weeks since his departure.
Kumar, it’s going to be difficult to get even a few likes on your posts now, assuming you’ll have any posts worth sharing at all after the end of your career
How sweet revenge is
How satisfying it is to see someone get what they deserve!