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AI-Indian Airlines merger complete

NEW DELHI: With the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) approving the application for merger of Air India and Indian Airlines, the new company, National Aviation Company of India Limited (NACIL), has formally become a legal entity. The merger also marks the culmination of the process that was initiated by Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel about a year ago.

The company was incorporated under the Companies Act, 1956, on March 30 and with the filing of the MCA’s approval with the Registrar of Companies on Friday, the legal process for the merger is now complete.

V. Thulasidas takes over as the Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) and Vishwapati Trivedi as the Joint Managing Director (JMD) of the merged company. The merged airline will fly under the brand ‘Air India,’ both domestically and internationally.

The new airline will have a combined fleet size of over 112 aircraft, comparable to the best airline in the Asian region and will rank among the top 30 airlines globally. As part of its fleet acquisition programme of 111 aircraft, the merged entity will be inducting 21 new aircraft (seven Boeing 777, ten A-320 family aircraft and four Boeing 737-800) this year itself. The merger will provide an integrated international and domestic footprint, which will hopefully enhance customer proposition and allow easy entry into a global airline alliance.

Official sources in the Civil Aviation Ministry pointed out that the merged carrier would count upon achieving synergies on account of optimal utilisation of resources through improvement in load factors and yields on commonly serviced routes as well as deployment of ‘freed up’ aircraft capacity on alternative routes. Leveraging the combined network and route rationalisation is expected to result in improved product offering to travellers.

The merged airline will have other revenue generating divisions such as cargo, low cost carrier (LCC), ground handling and MRO with each one of them being managed as a separate strategic business unit (SBU) under the corporate umbrella.

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