Air India, Vistara Sign Interline Partnership; To Help Domestic, Global Flyers

Air India on Wednesday announced that it has entered into an interline partnership with full-service carrier, Vistara, enabling passengers to travel between the two airlines’ network seamlessly.

The partnership will enable flyers to book their flights on either airline and, seamlessly get access to several domestic destinations as well as international destinations.

This will allow Air India’s customers to access Vistara’s domestic network and also give Vistara’s flyers to access over 80 points of Air India’s extensive domestic and global network.

In an interline arrangement, one airline can issue and accept tickets that are operated by the partner airline.

This partnership agreement with Vistara comes as the former is in the process of merging with the Tata owned airline.

“The scope of the agreement between the two airlines includes Inter Airline Through Check-in (IATCI) implementation, which enables guests to receive their boarding passes at the first point of departure for all the travel sectors on a single ticket, and have their baggage checked-in through to their final destinations. Air India and Vistara operate at the same terminals at most major airports in India, adding to the ease of the on-ground travel experience for guests with interline itineraries,’ a statement from the airline read.

Air India and Vistara have also implemented ‘Interline Considerations on Irregular Operations (IROPs)’ or the ‘disruption transfer’ functionality, the airline stated.

“IROPs will enable the two airlines to seamlessly transfer passengers to one another’s first available alternative flights in case of operational disruptions such as delays, cancellations, diversions and minimise any inconvenience to their guests,” the airline stated.

Air India has over 100 interline agreements and close to 50 through check-in agreements with partner airlines globally, such as Lufthansa, United Airlines, Air Canada, and Singapore Airlines, among others.

Campbell Wilson, chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD), Air India, said, “We are pleased at our interline partnership with Vistara, which will provide greater connectivity and convenience to our joint customers travelling within and outside of India on both our expanding route networks…We look forward to serving Vistara’s customers with additional travel choices to Air India destinations across the Americas, Europe, Far East, Australia, and the Middle East.”

Vinod Kannan, CEO of Vistara, said, “This partnership brings together two leading airlines in India to offer greater convenience and enhanced connectivity to customers traveling across our joint network. We are delighted to further strengthen our relationship with Air India and connect our customers to new destinations in their wide network.”