Air India modifies travel policy, opens more premium seats for sale 

Mumbai

All Air India employees including its top management will travel in economy class on domestic routes from April 1 as the airline alters its travel policies.

The move, which is expected to free up more premium economy and business class seats for sale, will come into effect in two phases in April and June.

This comes in the backdrop of retrofit in aircraft, improvement in on time performance and increased demand for premium cabins.

Employees will be allowed to upgrade to premium economy or business class if those seats remain unsold 50 minutes before a flight departure. 

Customer centricity

An Air India spokesperson said the move demonstrates its customer centricity.

A senior official said on-time performance has improved to 83 per cent in the past six weeks with a combination of factors contributing to improvement. These include better availability of components, maintenance support and changes in network and scheduling.

Air India is also seeing an improvement in yields, the official said. While retrofit of aircraft has increased the number of premium seats, growth in corporate sales and revenue management strategies is helping the airline target more high yielding traffic. Sales in foreign markets is increasing too, he added.

Earlier this month, the first of its 27 legacy Airbus A320 aircraft rejoined service after a retrofit. The retrofit of all 27 planes will be completed by third quarter of 2025. With this, all Air India’s A320 planes will have a three-class configuration comprising eight business, 24 premium economy and 132 economy seats.