Team of 80 people harmonising ops of 4 Tata airlines: Air India CEO

A team of 80 people has been involved for the last eight months in harmonising operating procedures across four Tata Group-run airlines as part of the two mergers, Air India Chief Executive Officer Campbell Wilson said on Friday.

The Tata Group is consolidating its aviation business and merging four airlines into two. While Air India is being merged with Vistara to create a single full-service carrier, AIX Connect is being merged into Air India Express to create a single low-cost carrier under Air India.

In a message sent to employees, Wilson welcomed the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore’s (CCCS) approval earlier this week on the Air India-Vistara merger. “This approval complements the one granted by the Competition Commission of India six months ago and, being the final competition-related approval, permits Air India and Vistara to now share detailed information to optimise our schedules, contracts and accelerate the journey to merger,” he said.

In light of this, it is heartening to see that a key enabler of this merger has already been running full steam ahead, he noted. “The project we’ve been running, involving more than 80 people over eight months, to harmonise operating procedures and manuals across the four Tata airlines is now entering its final phase,” Wilson mentioned.

The cross-airline team is hard at work, having spent Thursday and Friday together making the final changes to documents and charting the implementation path. “Alignment of procedures will expedite the safe transfer of crew and aircraft from one air operator certificate to another, so it is a critical aspect of bringing our two low-cost carriers, and our two full-service carriers, into the final state. Thank you to all involved in obtaining the competition clearances as well as everyone working hard to align our processes,” he mentioned.

Vistara, a 51:49 joint venture of the Tata Group and Singapore Airlines, is anticipating an operational merger with Air India by mid-2025, in addition to its expectations of receiving legal approvals for the same by the middle of the ongoing calendar year, its chief executive officer Vinod Kannan said at a press briefing in January.

Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines had in November 2022 announced the plan to merge Vistara into Air India. As part of the deal, Singapore Airlines will invest Rs 2,059 crore in the expanded share capital of Air India for a 25.1 per cent stake. Tata Sons will have the remaining 74.9 per cent stake in the combined entity.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Air India operated a total of 15 all-women crew flights in the domestic and international sectors. Over 15 per cent of Air India pilots are women. Women employees constitute as much as 51 per cent of Air India’s workforce.

First Published: Mar 08 2024 | 6:03 PM IST