Nikhil Ravishankar faces racist attacks after historic appointment as Air New Zealand CEO
He will be succeeding Greg Foran and will reportedly be assuming the new role and responsibility from October 20, 2025. This landmark achievement of the Indian-origin business executive was met with criticism and the country's media claimed that they had to disable comments on social media after a barrage of racist remarks targeted Ravishankar's ethnicity.
After New Zealand Herald, Radio New Zealand and TVNZ's 1News digital service also disabled comments to restrict insulting, inflammatory or derogatory comments on the post.
"We appreciate the high level of interest in this story but cannot safely moderate it at this time," New Zealand Herald news outlet said in a Facebook post.
"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," Otago Daily Times quoted a spokesperson as saying.
1News spokesperson said that the publication was forced to restricting comments as sufficient monitoring of inappropriate comments wasn't possible. "The vast majority were appropriate, however some were not. 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," the spokesperson of the news outlet informed Otago Daily Times.
According to Nikhil Ravishankar's, LinkedIn profile, he has been with Air New Zealand for nearly five years as Chief Digital Officer. Before this, he worked as chief digital officer at Vector New Zealand. Ravishankar attended Mount Albert Grammar School in New Zealand's largest city and went on to secure bachelor's degrees in science and commerce from the University of Auckland.
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