Air India’s struggle to survive and thrive found hope in 2022 when the loss- making airline was taken over by the Tata Group.
Air India flew under the banner of Tatas this year. While the assessment regarding the acquisition is a success or not is yet to be made, the Indian aviation sector is anticipating an emerging tycoon with Tata consolidating Vistara, AirAsia and Air India.
Air Asia India is being merged with Air India Express while Vistara, where Singapore Airlines has 49 per cent, will be merged with Air India. Subsequently, Singapore Airlines will have a 25.1 per cent stake in Air India.
Adding to that, in November, the news of Air India introducing premium economy class in some of its international flights was seen as a big step towards airline’s attempt to widen its market share.
With its massive revival plan for the next five years, experts are assuming that there will be more clarity regarding the Tata owned airlines being able to compete with aviation behemoth IndiGo, which has risen to become the airline with the largest fleet.
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Meanwhile, IndiGo, guided by the new CEO Pieter Elbers, is also working on expansion plans and is also wet-leasing wide-body aircraft.
According to the DGCA Statistics, IndiGo has the largest market share with more than 50 per cent share contributed by IndiGo. IndiGo stands at an unbeatable position in the aviation sector of India. However, the airline acquisitions by Tata will bring the total share of Vistara, Air Asia and Air India to a close second with more than 20 per cent of market share.
Air India is already giving a close competition to IndiGo in various categories. In On-Time Performance (OTP) of scheduled domestic airlines it is behind just to IndiGo and is ahead to Vistara and Air Asia.
However, all the expansion plans and India’s growing airline passengers and airports will be assessed against the V-shaped recovery claims of the sector mentioned by Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.