Tata group-controlled Air India is working through a backlog of more than 600 legal cases filed by customers against the erstwhile (pre-privatisation) Air India, some of which date back to more than 15 years.
“In the past few months the team from Customer Experience and Corporate Legal have amicably resolved around one quarter of the backlog and are steadily working through the rest,” Campbell Wilson, CEO and MD, Air India said in an internal email on Friday.
In March last year, minister of state for civil aviation VK Singh said that Air India has 2,657 cases pending against it in Indian and international courts on matters related to employee service and consumer complaints.
In January 2022, the Tata group assumed full control of the former flag carrier after making a successful bid of Rs 18,000 crore in October 2021. The full-service carrier is merging Vistara into itself for which it received the nod from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) last week.
“This is a welcome and important step towards the eventual integration of the four Tata airlines into two, one full-service and one low-cost, though is not the only step,” Wilson added.
The group also needs the approval from the competition regulators in some other jurisdictions, including Singapore, before it can fully press the accelerator. All the necessary approvals for the merger of the two airlines are expected to be secured by April 2024.
In June this year, the CCI sent show cause notices to Air India and Vistara with regards to their proposed merger. The two airlines furnished their responses subsequently.
But even before the merger process is complete, Air India, last month, revamped its logo and the aircraft ditching the red arched window accents for a sleeker livery which has hues of gold red and purple.