Like I blogged before taking off on my 3-week vacation here, it was going to take a hell of a lot of miracles to happen for Air India to make it to the Star Alliance. The airline is in a mess, and it works the standard Indian bureaucratic way. Here is the next big news that came, although almost totally expected. The 27 member Chief Executive Board of the Star Alliance has voted to keep AI out of the alliance for the reasons of not meeting the agreed membership requirements. WSJ published the news article on this here and the New York Times has it here. This punctures the whole turnaround plan for the airline after the other issue that…
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Air India: will it join the Star Alliance and should it join?
So it’s been the longest membership in the making for the Star Alliance perhaps and it might turn out to be an effort in vain after all. Star Alliance invited Air India (AI) to join the alliance in 2007, in an effort to penetrate the Indian market which was starting to make its mark in the global aviation industry just about then. The current AI used to operate as two carriers then, where Air India (AI) used to serve the international routes and Indian Airlines (IC) used to serve the domestic market. The whole process of merging the airlines, including the IT systems only completed in April 2011 and then the airline had already missed the deadline of joining in…