Air India-Vistara merger: Systems, tech integration gathers pace ahead of November 12 D-date | Business News
As Vistara’s merger into Air India draws closer, the back-end systems and technology integration between the two Tata group carriers has gathered steam with over 2.7 lakh passenger reservations and over 45 lakh loyalty programme members already migrated to the Air India’s digital systems, Air India’s Chief Digital & Technology Officer Satya Ramaswamy said Tuesday.
“The significant effort is to comprehensively address Vistara customers’ experience across all digital systems post merger,” Ramaswamy said in a select media briefing at the Air India headquarters in Gurugram.
All customers who were booked on Vistara flights scheduled for or after November 12—the prescribed date for the merger—have been intimated about the changes in bookings, which have now been moved to Air India. Ramaswamy added that nearly numerous systems have been integrated and nearly all will be done by November 12. There are over 140 systems that needed to be migrated for the enlarged Air India to operate seamlessly after the merger.
Additionally, the migration involves 3,385 Vistara suppliers, 70 aircraft that operate over 320 daily flights, over 3,300 crew, and 86 IT contracts, among others. Nearly 6,500 Vistara employees have also been migrated to Air India.
The key focus areas for systems migration—being seen as the backbone of the merger from a customer, operations, and employee point of view—include reservation transfers, loyalty account transfers, financial accounts integrity, aircraft and crew transfers, employee payroll integration, airport systems integration, and flight schedule continuity, among others.
With the merger taking effect on November 12, all Vistara aircraft and flights will be transferred to and operated by Air India. Even as Vistara will fly into the sunset, the Vistara experience for passengers will be maintained with no significant change to the product and crew, at least in the initial months following the merger. All existing Vistara flights will continue to be operated using Vistara’s existing fleet of aircraft and by the existing Vistara crew, although the flight numbers will change to those of Air India.
To enable Vistara’s loyal flyers and passengers generally to identify Vistara flights while booking, Air India has decided to use four-digit flight numbers for Vistara flights beginning with “2”, against Air India’s three-digit flight numbers.
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“For instance, UK 955 (UK is the current airline identifier code for Vistara flights) will become AI 2955, helping customers identify them while booking,” Air India had said last week.
Air India also announced that following the airlines’ merger, which will also include the merger of their loyalty programmes, the combined loyalty programme will evolve into an all new avatar under the brand ‘Maharaja Club’–a reference to Air India’s popular long-standing mascot. Initially, all members of the Club Vistara loyalty programme are being seamlessly transferred to Air India’s loyalty programme Flying Returns.
In its nearly 10 years of operations, Vistara had made a mark for itself as the premier full-service carrier in India that offered a superior product in a market dominated by budget carriers. With the Tata group deciding to merge Vistara into the group’s flagship airline Air India–which the Tatas acquired from the government in January 2022–there were concerns about Vistara’s product and service quality after the merger.
Under government control, Air India was under financial stress, and this reflected in its product and service quality, which was seen as below the standards expected from a full-service carrier. While the now-privatised airline has undertaken a mammoth fleet modernisation and expansion plan, it still has a large number of legacy aircraft that are in a rundown state.
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The wheels for the merger were set in motion in 2022 after the Tata group acquired Air India. As a joint venture partner in Vistara, Singapore Airlines holds 49 per cent stake in the airline and will have 25.1 per cent stake in the enlarged Air India after the merger.
Apart from merging Air India and Vistara, the Tata group had decided to merge its budget carriers Air India Express and AIX Connect (formerly AirAsia India). That merger took effect from October 1. Once the Air India-Vistara merger is complete, the Air India group will have a full-service carrier Air India and a low-cost airline Air India Express. The consolidation is a critical part of Air India’s transformation programme Vihaan.Ai, that seeks to build Air India into an airline of global repute.
