Star Alliance confident over Air India integration
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Star Alliance is confident that Air India’s membership will proceed smoothly, despite previous problems integrating the national carrier.
Speaking to Travel Daily this week, the alliance’s CEO, Mark Schwab, said Air India is a different airline now to when it first tried to join Star in 2011, and that the integration processes – which is currently underway – should proceed smoothly.
“We’ve been working very closely with Air India for a number of years. The reality is that they had a tough merger they went through a few years ago between Air India and Indian Airlines. That work is completed now and there is new IT, infrastructure and have a huge fleet renewal programme with Dreamliners. We still have some work to do but I don’t see any barriers,” he explained.
With the India gap now filled, Schwab said he would now like to introduce a Russian carrier to the fold. But again, this faces barriers.
“There is one large geographical area that there is still a gap in and that is in Russia. Star Alliance has no home carrier there yet as that has its own infrastructure and consolidation issues and we don’t have a resolution to that yet,” he said.
Russian national carrier Aeroflot is currently a member of Star’s rival, SkyTeam, while another Russian airline, S7, is a member of oneworld. This leaves Transaero as the biggest Russian carrier not currently aligned to an airline alliance.
Latin America will also be a gap when TAM leaves Star as part of its merger with LAN Airlines, but the alliance will still get have connections in Brazil through Colombia’s Avianca and its partner, Avianca Brazil.
Star is currently the biggest airline alliance, with 26 full members.
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