Since it acquired Air India in January, the Indian conglomerate has injected operational know-how into a struggling airline with a reputation for poor service.
As it seeks to gain market share, Air India reported an on-time performance of 90.8% at the country’s major airports in October.
Just a year earlier, the airline ranked lowest among top Indian carriers, logging an on-time performance of 75.1% in October 2021. It received three complaints per 10,000 passengers that month, far above the 0.57 average.
For Air India, improving punctuality is just one step towards overcoming its image problem.
“Its planes are so old that I feel tired just being onboard,” said a Japanese man in his 30s who works in Bengaluru.
A Mumbai resident called Air India the most unpredictable airline, with lost luggage a frequent occurrence.
Originally created as a Tata unit and brought under state control in 1953, Air India was worn down in recent years by a brutal price war with budget airlines and was weighed down by mounting debt.
Enter Tata, which regained control in January after nearly 70 years.
Armed with cash, Tata increased aircraft procurement, hiring and employee training. It created a team dedicated to improving customer service, local media report.
Tata plans to reorganise its aviation business by buying out joint venture AirAsia India and merging it with a budget airline unit by the end of 2023. Air India would be combined with Vistara, a joint venture with Singapore Airlines, in 2024.
Optimising the airline network cannot be achieved when these units work separately, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, Tata Group’s holding company, said in an interview with Nikkei.
Chandrasekaran declined to say whether Tata’s various airline brands would become one, saying that discussions are ongoing.
Air India seeks to capture 30% of the domestic passenger market in the next five years. Its 9.1% share in October was a far cry from industry leader IndiGo’s 56.7%. But when it is combined with Vistara’s 9.2% and AirAsia India’s 7.6%, the trio commands more than a quarter of the market.
Air India also has a tailwind from a market returning to growth. Domestic passengers totalling 98 million in the first 10 months of this year, a 59% surge from a year earlier.