The Air India merger with Vistara was completed on November 12, 2024. I travelled with Vistara on the night of November 11 on the last domestic flight and then flew internationally with the airline on one of their first flights on November 12, 2024 (in the form of Air India). On both days, everything looked alright as I arrived at the Delhi airport twice over.
On the digital end, everything also looked like it was going fine. A cutover was made from the Vistara databases to the Air India database, and it mostly looked like all the transferrable features were posted correctly to Air India Flying Returns, nee, Maharaja Club. However, the teams did not estimate correctly the excitement or the wait that people had for the transition to be completed. A day after, it all seemed to crack under the weight of the new members of Maharaja Club (and existing ones, too).
Members could not use their Maharaja Points for a while to make redemptions. Payments were being collected, but tickets were not issued.
What is mighty frustrating is that I have tried 4 times to redeem miles, each time I have been charged (I'm sure it will be refunded later) but each time the system seems to lie and say there was a problem with the payment.@airindia this is a very frustrating problem, what was… pic.twitter.com/SEE7wjCTCJ
— Nitin Sarin (@Deaphen) November 17, 2024
Air India tells me that Members can redeem their Maharaja points online and through their contact centre. The airline also said that approximately 6 million Maharaja points have been redeemed daily since the integration was completed. That should be approximately 50 million Maharaja points redeemed till the writing of this post.
But the significant issue members had was concerning their free ticket vouchers, an offer made by Vistara for their co-brand card holders, but not by Air India.
The transfer of the vouchers happened all right, but soon, members ran into this wall where the online redemption was pulled.
The online redemption of vouchers has now been resumed (only via the website, not on the app) as of November 19, 2024. Per an Air India statement to LiveFromALounge.com, “The online functionality to use complimentary ticket vouchers is now live on our website. All active vouchers have already been extended for a period of three months post migration.”
https://twitter.com/rhoeshan/status/1858737961543889127
One of the other unique problems only occurring for the members of Vistara who flew on Vistara on November 10 and 11, 2024, was that the airline has not credited the points and tier miles (accrued during the downtime of Club Vistara) to date.
I have experienced this, with some of my flights being stuck and yet to be credited (one flown on November 10 and one on November 11, 2024). The airline claims these flights will be credited by the end of the week as per Vistara Rules (November 24, 2024). I’m still watching this.
Last but not least, Air India has seen a large influx of new elite members. Remember, on Air India, earning status is not easy, but on Vistara, it was as easy as holding the Vistara co-branded credit cards. So, the premium call centre went under a deluge after the merger. Air India confirmed that elite members are auto-diverted to the premium call centre if they dial from their registered phone numbers. The premium call centre is fully functional, but may be facing some volume constraints at the moment. This should regularise soon.
Bottomline
It seems that Air India is currently recovering from the initial shock of having a whole new bastion of loyalty members (4.5 million of them) and has responded super fast to some of the initial troubles that came their way. The airline has fixed up the voucher redemption process and taken it online, while some other action items remain pending.
What has been your experience with Air India + Vistara in the first week of the merger? What have been the pain points?
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I have been taking AI 2xxx flights after 12th Nov. Have flown on 3 occasions between 20th-26th November and there is no auto credit of points to my Maharaja Club account. Have also tried to raise retro claim but it throws an error message – ‘Please try again’.
I have raised a service ticket also, but customer care team is happily responding with auto generated messages instead of looking into the problem.
Is anyone else facing the same issue and any advice to resolve it?
@Amit, seems the timeline has moved to 10 days or so at the moment, not sure why.
Thanks for your response Ajay. However, points still didn’t get credited and there was no response to the service ticket. Had to raise this on X and followed up again today, they have asked to share flight details, Maharaja Club ID and Govt Photo ID on DM to credit points. I wonder if this will be the norm going forward.
I know it’s either them or Indigo now, but missing good old Vistara days already.
@Amit, Flight Details and Maharaja Club ID was ok, but Photo ID is “whaaat?”
It’s just that they want some kind of authentication on X, which is through a government issued photo ID. Now I see that the points have been credited as per my request. Have 4 more flights over the next week also, let’s see if they fix the issue or not.
@Amit, problem with this approach is, we don’t know how they handle our ID after we turn it in.
@Ajay thanks for the response
But in my case I did not issue the vouchers they automatically got issued by the system itself on 6th nov, and AI have extended the vouchers as per that date
Some of your other readers have reported this as well
I had a surprisingly seamless and positive experience in booking two award (Vistara vouchers) tickets on the Air India website (these vouchers were not showing on the mobile app) on 12th November itself for Business class travel in December. The points and tier transitions were also showing correctly. So, perhaps the transition glitch did not affect all accounts.
They have not extended the validity of the Vistara upgrade vouchers for me,
Also my complimentary Vistara tkt vouchers seem to have been issued on their own on 6th nov and extended as per that date validity rather than allowing me to issue it on my own?
Has this been the same or similar for everyone?
@KSB, only the complimentary tickets were to be extended. In the AI system, no extensions, hence you get a full 9 month of validity on issuance rather than ability to generate on your own.
It seems maintaining tier status with Air India is going to be very tough. For Vistara, we required 35k points for platinum and as Plat, we were earning 11 tier points per Rs.100 . But for AI, we need 45k points for and we will be earning only 6 tier points per Rs. 100 (irrespective of level). So there is a huge increase in spend requirement to reach or maintain Plat. Roughly 750k needs to be spent instead 318k earlier (excluding surcharges and taxes). I think many of the domestic FF including me are going to get downgraded after the period of initial status match.
@Anoop, yes 750K is the ask for Platinum. 500k for gold. These rules were announced in April itself
Hi Ajay, don’t know if you’ve noticed – but AI is charging GST for award bookings, when their own website shows base fare as 0. For premium cabins – it’s generally 12% of the miles cost (where they’re treating each mile as 1₹) and calculating base fare and GST accordingly. Is this a bug or does AI actually charge GST on their award bookings?
Wow…This is crazy