Air India gains from Star Alliance

State-owned Air India’s decision to join Star Alliance, a global partnership of airlines in July 2014, has benefited it. Star Alliance’s 28 members offer a network of 18,500 daily flights to 1,300 airports in 192 countries. The members sell tickets jointly and a single interface for passengers to book tickets in member airlines.

According to Pankaj Srivastava, commercial director of Air India, partner airlines have brought in a lot of benefits. Of the airlines in the alliance, 16-17 operate to India but their destinations are limited to Mumbai and Delhi. “AI gets the opportunity of flying those passengers to different destinations in India (via what is termed code sharing). It makes commercial sense,” said Srivastava.

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AI's revenue from alliance member-airlines doubled from Rs 110 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 213 crore in 2014-15. Till December in the present financial year (ending March 31), it had earned Rs 180 crore from the alliance. There was apprehension that the alliance might result in AI not going for expansion on long-haul routes but be content to act as 'feeder' to some of the more powerful members like Lufthansa, United Airlines and Air Canada. However, Srivastava said the alliance opened new gateways for them.

“A lot of outbound journeys from India are break journeys. Air Canada operates a flight from Canada to London and we fly London-Delhi; passengers from the Air Canada flight are automatically transferred to Air India,” he explained.

Till December 2015, Star Alliance has brought 152,216 passengers compared to 150,000 in 2014-15. “As the alliance is getting stronger, and we forge more code shares, the figures are improving,” said Srivastava. Kapil Kaul, regional head of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, said AI's integration into the grouping had been mutually beneficial. “ An international alliance was obviously a fruitful move for AI. Similarly for Star, it got a partner airline in this region and got an advantage over others,” he said.