New Delhi: In a surprise choice, Ashwani Lohani, a Railway Service officer who is now the chief of Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (MPTDC), was on Thursday appointed as CMD of Air India, the state-run carrier whose combined losses currently stood at Rs 30,000 crore.

An engineer-turned-bureaucrat, Lohani, who is the first Railway Service officer to be made the Chairman and Managing Director of Air India, will succeed Rohit Nandan, a 1982 batch UP cadre IAS officer.