This site has spent considerable ink tracking Air India’s intentions, given that the airline is constantly changing. Last week, Air India’s CCO, Nipun Aggarwal, held a media roundtable, during which he shed light on many important questions that must be on the minds of Air India’s travellers.

Air India will continue to add First Class to widebody aircraft, albeit selectively.

Nipun Aggarwal said that most top airlines still have a niche for first class on some of the large and prominent routes. London and New York markets still have an appetite for First Class.

The Air India Group operates 1,168 daily flights, including 313 services to international destinations. Of those overseas flights, 244 are short-haul, and 69 are long-haul. The Tata Group is seeing good results on the premium cabins. As per Air India CCO Nipun Aggarwal, load factors across Premium Economy and First Class have increased. This should be a natural consequence, as the airline retrofits older aircraft to add Premium Economy capacity and consolidates the numbers of Vistara into their numbers. Per Aggarwal, the revenue growth in the front cabin has been almost 2.3 times, and in the back cabin is 1.6 times.

Air India’s largest wide-body aircraft, which are yet to join the fleet, the A350-1000 and the Boeing 777-9, will have 325-400 seats. The A350-1000 is anticipated to arrive shortly, but the airline did not put a date for it, given the availability of supplies by the OEMs. The first Boeing 787-9 will roll out later this year (again, subject to Boeing being able to ship it in time).

Air India intends to expand its share of the premium capacity on widebody aircraft. The retrofit of the widebody aircraft will mean doubling the premium seats in the widebody cabins. Adding the premium economy cabins to the 777 and the 787-8s (which don’t exist on board now) will make it possible. Nipun Aggarwal commented that the A350, the -1000 variant, will have first-class seats. The product definition for the 777X for the airline has not started yet.

The Legacy Boeing 777s saga

The Boeing 777 aircraft, which the airline inherited at the time of the takeover, has led to delays, cancellations and technical issues with some legacy Boeing 777 planes mainly used to operate ultra-long-haul flights to North America. The airline is now starting to monitor the uptime on these planes and is maintaining buffers. Despite these buffers, the airline does not intend to cut back on any of the current routes it operates.

The retrofit of the legacy Boeing 777 aircraft, which was supposed to start in 2024, will now begin in 2026.

Air India continues to delineate markets between itself and AI Express.

Air India is also undergoing ongoing network rationalisation. According to AI, at the time of the Tata Group’s takeover, there were 29 overlapping domestic routes between AI and AIX. These have now been reduced to 20. There were also 23 overlapping international routes on the network, which have been reduced to 6.

Air India is increasing its focus on transit passengers.

The airline is also working to reduce connection times through the network optimisation exercise. For instance, as per AI’s Aggarwal, the average connecting time from domestic to international flights has been reduced to 3.30 hours from 6.30 hours. This has also been done to increase international-to-international (I to I) traffic to Air India.

Currently, AI’s I-to-I traffic share amongst its total business is 10 percent, and they hope to increase it to 15-20 percent in the next three years. Around 10 percent of passengers on Air India’s US and Australia flights are I-to-I transfer passengers. The share is higher for flights to the UK (around 15 percent) and Europe (around 20 percent).

Air India wants to attract traffic from Southeast Asia, the Far East, and SAARC and then transport it to Europe, the US, and Canada. According to AI, the I-to-I traffic flying over India is 130 million annually, around six times the country’s long-haul traffic.

Air India is now an airline of scale.

Air India has 135 narrow-body planes and 67 wide-body aircraft. On the group level, the airline has 300 aircraft. The airline will now focus on growing business out of its three hubs (Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru). Air India Express will serve all other markets.

Air India’s Maharaja Club will soon bring in Air India Express.

As the loyalty programme’s super boss, Nipun Aggarwal has deep insights into how loyalty works at the Air India group. Aggarwal said a common group loyalty programme will soon include Air India Express customers. The airline’s loyalty programme already has over 10.3 million members and adds about 50,000 new members monthly. Air India Express’ Aloke Singh had mentioned similarly last year about the airline coming on board Air India’s programme soon.

Credit Card propositions are being readied for launch.

Air India plans for new co-branded credit cards. Nipun Aggarwal said that they recognise that co-branded credit cards present a huge market opportunity. Today, the airline’s numbers on the co-brand card market are small (5 lakhs only), and they are working to simplify the card portfolio and come out with a new card with a much stronger value proposition. Pre-merger between Air India and Vistara, Air India had a co-brand partnership with SBI Cards, while Vistara had co-brand partnerships with Axis Bank, IDFC First Bank, SBI Cards and IndusInd Bank Credit Cards.

Bottomline

There are a ton of things happening at Air India. Amongst the headlines is that Air India and Air India Express are carving out the network amongst themselves, with AI taking care of the key metros and AI Express taking care of the other stations. The airline is also working on a First Class product for its ultra-long-haul flagship aircraft. From a loyalty perspective, we should soon expect Air India Express to be on the roster of Maharaja Club partners and new co-brand card launches.

What do you think of all the plans and news from Air India?

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