Air India plans major digital upgrade for Vistara

NEW DELHI — Air India is planning a significant digital upgrade for Vistara once it completes its merger with the full-service carrier on 12 November.

“Vistara is a great company and brings a lot to the table. Post-merger, Vistara’s customers and employees will benefit from a comprehensive digital upgrade,” Air India chief digital and technology officer Satya Ramaswamy vowed during the recent CAPA India Digital Aviation Summit in New Delhi.

A joint venture between Singapore Airlines and Tata Sons, Vistara is often praised for its impressive onboard passenger experience but criticized for its website and app functionality.

Meanwhile, technology is already transforming all facets of Air India’s own operations — both back office and passenger-facing.

Late last year, the Tata-owned carrier shuttered its historic data centers in Mumbai and New Delhi and finalized the move of its legacy computational workload to the cloud. This in turn eliminated data silos within the organization and enabled the carrier to adopt advanced data analytics and Artificial Intelligence based on Microsoft Azure OpenAI models.

“It was a monumental task completed with great speed in two years with minimal disruption,” Ramaswamy said of the cloud migration. “We now have the ability to correlate data across multiple departments, giving us a competitive advantage.”

A new Generative AI virtual assistant — known as AI.g. — now answers some 97% of the queries made to Air India. The AI bot plus Air India’s new design-rich applications for mobile and web have received high ratings on Google and Bing, noted the Air India executive.

Ramaswamy also pointed to improvements in the onboard experience. Many Air India flights now feature new or updated inflight entertainment systems from Panasonic Avionics and Thales and aircraft retrofits continue apace.

Wireless IFE, as powered by Bluebox Aviation Systems, is also on offer. And an inflight connectivity announcement is understood to be pending for Air India. (Vistara is already a customer of Panasonic Avionics’ Ku-band satellite-supported IFC system aboard its Airbus A321neo and Boeing 787-9 twinjets, and offers passengers a complimentary session for 20 minutes.)

Air India’s broader digital transformation is timely, as it has laid the groundwork for ingesting Vistara, which is expected to operate its final flight on 11 November. Thereafter, pending regulatory approvals, all Vistara flights will be operated by Air India, and all bookings will be powered by Air India technology.

The merged entity will also benefit from Air India’s decision last month to adopt the International Air Transport Association’s latest New Distribution Capability (NDC) schema, which opens up fresh opportunities to build airline retailing more intelligently.

“NDC enhances the capability of communications between Air India and travel agents, and enables Air India to present tailored offers, ancillary products and services, and pricing options in real time to travel sellers worldwide,” explained the carrier.

Customers are being told to expect a more “seamless and efficient” booking experience.

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