Vistara and Air India commence merger process

Close up of engine of Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Olivier Cleynen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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LONDON – Vistara and Air India, both owned by the Tata Group of companies have kick started their integration process.

With the merger, the Vistara brand would cease to exist, and Air India will emerge as a major full-service carrier in the country, reports AviationSource writer Gaurav Gowda.

Soon after the Tata’s took control of India’s government owned airline Air India last year, they decided to bring all the four airlines owned by them together.

The plan was to merge them into one low-cost airline and one full-service carrier. Finally, after months of talk about the merger between Air India and Vistara, both the airlines have finally started the process.

Deloitte, which was tasked with the process of integration of human resources, has gone through a group of employees to help them ease this transition.

It has also been reported that the airline has scheduled town hall meetings for the pilots of both the airline to discuss their seniority and career progress in the company after the merger.

“Given the criticality of seamless integration of flight operations we are planning an exclusive town hall with the pilots on the 2nd of March from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM to share the proposed road map for flight operations integration and address queries” the CEO of Vistara wrote in a note.

Currently both the airlines are working on getting required clearances from the various government bodies to go ahead with this merger.

A Vistara Airbus lined up on the runway for takeoff.
Photo Credit: Md Shaifuzzaman Ayon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Air India incident


In related news coming from Thiruvananthapuram International Airport on February 19, an Air India Express flight IX 540 with 156 souls on-board (including the crew members) made an emergency landing after a technical glitch was discovered by the pilot in the aircraft’s nose gear.

Soon after declaring the emergency, the airports officials swung into action and immediately Runway 34 was cleared for landing with all the emergency protocols in place.

The aircraft involved in this incident was a Boeing 737-800 which was 16.1 years old during the incident, the aircraft was manufactured in 2007 and was delivered to Air India express itself.

After the passengers disembarked, the aircraft was towed to the remote bay, upon inspection it was found out that the top layer of a wheel of the nose gear of the aircraft had de-capped.

The Indian regulator DGCA will hold an investigation to the report, but Air India Express has not yet released any statement yet on the incident.

The flight concerned was operating from Dubai to Thiruvananthapuram and the flight was already delayed. Following this incident, the aircraft hasn’t flown out of the airport and seems to be grounded there.

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