DELHI- India’s aviation regulator, Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), has approved the integration of Air India (AI) and Vistara Airlines’ (UK) aircraft line maintenance operations. This move marks a significant step towards the airlines’ planned merger.
Air India currently conducts in-house line maintenance at 12 stations across India.
Air India Vistara Maintenance
The integration aims to optimize resources and enhance operational performance. Key benefits include:
- Reduced aircraft turnaround times
- Improved on-time performance
- Enhanced schedule integrity
- Increased reliability of operations
The integration is expected to create economies of scale in resource mobilization. It will also augment the trained manpower available for various maintenance tasks and aircraft checks across the group carriers, including Air India Express (IX).
The merged maintenance team will service a mixed fleet of wide-body and narrow-body aircraft. This unified approach enables:
- Better resource allocation
- Real-time availability of maintenance records
- Faster diagnosis and troubleshooting of technical issues
The integrated maintenance operations have secured CAR 145 approval from DGCA, ensuring compliance with civil aviation requirements.
Earlier, today 1000s of Vistara employees joined multiple departments of Air India Group.
Air India and Vistara announced their merger in November 2022. Post-merger, Singapore Airlines (SQ) will hold a 25.1% stake in Air India. Vistara is currently a joint venture between Tata Group and Singapore Airlines.
Strengthening its Root But Dependent on AIESL
According to Aviation A2Z sources, Air India is currently strengthening its engineering department by hiring aircraft technicians and aircraft maintenance engineers (AME). However, it heavily relied upon AI Engineering Services Limited (AIESL), its subsidiary before Tata took it over.
AIESL has the largest MRO capability in the country. It has the approval to carry out maintenance on all the aircraft that Air India currently operates. But we are not aware of Airbus A350 as of now.
Air India is also recruiting engineering staff from AIESL. Now after securing CAR 145 Approval, Air India will further enhance its line operations.
AIESL has major base and line facilities across India. The government-owned MRO is the only one in the country that has approval to carry out heavy maintenance on Boeing 777 and 787s.
Talking about Vistara, the airline carries out maintenance of its planes in-house. While Air India Express outsources its maintenance to AIESL similar to Air India.
Recently Air India has collaborated with Singapore Airlines to develop their own MRO at Bengaluru Airport
We will keep you posted once we have more information on the maintenance structure of Air India and Vistara.
Merger Approved by NCLT
In June, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approved the merger of Air India and Vistara marking the final step in the process. The Competition Commission of India had previously endorsed the merger in September 2023.
Several consulting firms, including BCG, Sabre, and Oliver Wyman, are collaborating on aligning the workforce and route network.
Those familiar with the matter indicated that the process will be executed gradually, with no plans to ground flights as part of the integration.
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