GoAir sues former MD Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, says he stole data before joining IndiGo

Low-fare airline GoAir sued its former managing director Wolfgang Prock-Schauer in the Bombay high court for alleged theft of confidential information within a week of him joining rival IndiGo, court documents showed.

Prock-Schauer became CEO of GoAir in June 2015 and was its managing director from April 2016 to late 2017, before joining IndiGo as chief operating officer on February 1, 2018. Go Airlines (India) Ltd is part of the Wadia group and operates GoAir, one of the smaller airlines in India, while rival IndiGo, operated by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, is India’s largest airline.

A GoAir lawyer submitted sealed documents he said belongs to his firm and were stolen by Prock-Schauer, a February 13 court order showed. According to the order, Prock-Schauer’s lawyer said he will not “use and/or copy and/or publish and/or disclose any of the confidential information, trade secrets and/or know-how belonging to GoAir”.

Subsequently, on March 14, the court allowed Prock-Schauer’s lawyer to inspect the documents on condition that they be kept confidential.

At the last hearing on April 27, senior counsel Janak Dwarkadas appearing for Prock-Schauer said, “During the last court hearing, we parted with the belief that the petitioners wanted to settle the case but now the company don’t want to settle. If the company had indicated this earlier, we would have gone ahead with the matter.” The court will hear the matter again on June 15.

Senior counsel Darius Khambata, representing GoAir, as well as Dwarkadas, appearing for Prock-Schauer, declined to comment on the development since the matter is under judicial consideration. A person close to the development, who didn’t want to be named said, “Wolfgang has not taken any confidential information; neither has he solicited anybody to join with him.”

IndiGo and GoAir didn’t respond to queries from Mint. Law firm Samvad Partners, representing Prock-Schauer, said, “As you are aware, since the matter is sub judice, we will not be able to discuss details of the matter. The honourable court has encouraged parties to settle the matter and parties are exploring the same.”

At IndiGo, Prock-Schauer is responsible for flight operations, maintenance and engineering and inflight services directly as well as airport operations and operations control centre.