A year after Air India failed to join the Star Alliance, the government on Tuesday said it would soon initiate talks with German carrier Lufthansa to adhere to its plan to mentor the national carrier to join the global airline group.
The 27-airline grouping, which is the largest alliance, had in July last year put on hold Air India’s integration on grounds that it did not meet the minimum joining requirements as stipulated in the contract signed in 2007. The national carrier had denied this.
“We are going to talk to Lufthansa to adhere to the plan we had to join the alliance. The government gave a lot of facilities to the (German) airline that was mentoring us to join Star Alliance. Meanwhile, Air India also had some problems. But now they are over,” Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said on Tuesday at the Economic Editors Conference here.
“Now we are going to talk to Lufthansa to adhere to the plan we had,” he said, adding that Lufthansa got a lot of flights into India in exchange for mentoring Air India.
Entry into the alliance would give a boost to Air India as it would be able to offer seamless travel to customers, usage of frequent flier points redeemable with any member airline and global connectivity. Star Alliance network offers 21,200 daily flights to 1,356 airports in 193 nations.
