Ganesh Kendale
NEW DELHI: Over 2.7 lakh passengers who had booked Vistara flights to travel on and after Nov 12, 2024, — when the airline merges into Air India — have been issued new tickets for travel on AI. However, the Tata Group has confirmed that for the next few months those who had booked Vistara will continue to get the same travel experience in terms of aircraft, crew and onboard service.But the one Air India vertical Vistara customers can look forward to an even better experience is the digital arena — the website and apps of AI, said Satya Ramaswamy, AI’s chief digital and transformation officer.
“We ave transformed AI’s digital arena and for the first time AI has filed for patents in this field. We are soon going to launch a one-click booking facility, instead of the multiple clicks required (across most airlines globally). While it is potentially possible to eventually have one website and app for AI and AI Express, that is not a plan as of now,” Ramaswamy said Tuesday.
Regarding the upcoming Vistara merger, he said most of the systems have been migrated to AI and a few remaining will either happen either by Nov 12 or even beyond that. “More than 2.7 lakh passenger reservations of Vistara have been migrated to AI. Over 45 lakh Vistara loyalty programme members are being migrated to AI loyalty programme. In all there are over 140 systems, a majority of which have been migrated,” he said. The focus area for the merger, digitally, are — transferring reservations and loyalty programmes, accounting, employee payroll, airport systems on D Day and schedule continuity. “There is a significant effort to comprehensively address Vistara customers’ experience across all digital systems post merger.”
Air India’s attempted turnaround is definitely the most challenging one in contemporary aviation. Given decades of neglect in its PSU years, AI aircraft – while absolutely safe operationally — lacked onboard comfort. While Tatas acquired AI over 2.5 years back, global supply chain issues have meant getting replacement seats, inflight entertainment and other essentials is taking much longer than initially assumed.
However given Tata’s prowess in technology, AI’s impressive digital turnaround has happened while the physical product (of legacy planes) is still some years away from achieving the aspired world class product status. “Thanks to AI’s digital transformation, the airline now has among the best website and app for anya airline globally. We are working on a new inflight entertainment (IFE) system. While on narrow body planes, we will provide content that passengers can watch on their personal electronic devices, wide body will have back-of-the-seat systems,” Ramaswamy — a veteran who has spent over three decades in tech industry and been with Tatas for last 14 years. He was assigned the task of digital transformation by Tata Group chief N Chandrasekaran.
