Move over Jet-Etihad, Air India to get Star Alliance edge

New Delhi: The national carrier today announced that it is once preparing to join Star Alliance, the most prestigious airline grouping in the world. This means it can now use the wide Star Alliance network, which includes successful airlines such as Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, THAI and Turkish Airlines as its members, for enhancing overseas operations. In a big way. In fact, if Air India manages to integrate itself with the Alliance in a short span of time, it may also be able to counter stiff competition otherwise coming its way from the Tata-Singapore Airlines alliance. Any which way ones looks at it, the Star Alliance entry can only be good news for Air India. "In a major decision in Vienna today, Star Alliance has unanimously decided to lift the earlier suspension of the process for Air India entry into the alliance. With this decision, final process for eventual entry of AI has begun," Air India said in a statement.
So what exactly will Star Alliance bring to the table? Now, instead of looking for a flight into the Gulf with either Emirates or Jet-Etihad, a passenger wanting to fly international from almost any city in India gets seamless transfers on a single boarding card in some cases. The passenger can book flights to the final destination at one time and hop on to a flight operated by a Star Alliance member anywhere on the route. So even if AI does not directly to fly to a destination, it can now offer flights to that destination on the strength of this alliance.
Read News In full 14/12/13 Sindhu Bhattacharya/First Post