The merger of Air India and Vistara has officially been completed on Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
The newly merged entity will now operate more than 5,600 weekly flights and connects more than 90 domestic and international destinations with a fleet of 208 aircraft, according to the carrier’s press release.
The new unified full-service carrier will operate flights as ‘Air India’ with the airline code ‘AI’ while Vistara aircraft can be identified by a four-digit flight number beginning with the digit “2” (e.g. UK 955 will become AI 2955).
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Additionally, the existing members of Vistara’s loyalty programme Club Vistara (CV) have been transferred to Air India’s Flying Returns programme, now renamed ‘Maharaja Club’.
Singapore Airlines, which held a 49% share in Vistara earlier, will now become a 25.1% shareholder in the new Air India group.
Air India also announced inducting more than 6,000 staff from Vistara into the new organisation structure, consolidating more than 4,000 vendor contracts, migrating 270,000 customer bookings, and inducting 4.5 million Club Vistara frequent flyer accounts to Air India’s recently-redesigned frequent flyer program, Maharaja Club.
The Air India-Vistara merger is also the second one for the group, after the merger of budget airlines Air India Express and AIX Connect (formerly known as Air Asia India) on October 1, 2024.
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This consolidation of the four Tata-owned airlines into one Group operating one full-service and one low-cost airline is part of an ongoing, five-year program, which the company calls Vihaan.AI.
The group as a whole now, operates more than 8,300 weekly flights on 312 routes, connecting more than 100 domestic and international destinations with a fleet of 300 aircraft.
The airline will now also be flying over 120,000 passengers every day and offers extended worldwide connectivity to over 800 destinations through more than 75 codeshare and interline partners.
The group has also purchased more than 500 new aircraft and is looking at a $400 million interior retrofit programme for legacy aircraft. It has also opened a new 600,000-square-foot training facility with the capacity to train 2,000 employees per day and is building a 12-bay maintenance base that will be operational in early 2026.
“The merger of Air India and Vistara completes the consolidation and restructuring phase of the Air India Group’s post-privatisation transformation journey, and is thus a significant milestone, said Campbell Wilson, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, Air India.
“Over the past two years, teams across the four airlines have worked closely together and with other stakeholders to ensure that the transition of people, assets, operations and, most importantly, customers, was as seamless as possible,” Wilson added.
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