Air India gets closer to Star Alliance membership, but may not be alone

In December 2013, Star Alliance announced that they were working with Air India to integrate AI into Star Alliance, and that Ai would be joining them as a member airline. At the time, I wrote about what effects this could mean for us fliers, as well as AI and Jet.

The first update on this front is that Star Alliance seems to be happy with AI's progress on the integration, as this piece from the Economic Times reports. Christian Klick of Star Alliance's corporate office is quoted as saying...

                 ...Integration of Air India with our network is on track.

                 ...it's up to the airline to decide when to join the club, which currently has 28 members, 

                    including Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines and United. 

and

                 ...Air India will formally announce the joining date, as this is their prerogative.

But what really surprises me is that it is expected that an official announcement may come in June, during the group's board meeting in London. Frankly, that is much sooner than I anticipated. 

Lately, I've seen some positives in AI's approach to their service attitude. Having said that, those may be just my perceptions, and also may be outlier events. I'm no AI sympathiser; nonetheless I think that AI joining Star Alliance will certainly be a big boost for AI's operations, financials and profitability. Maybe they're finally getting some parts of their act together?

However, AI might not be alone. This piece (from Mint) suggests that Star Alliance is also likely looking at low-cost partners to join them. The article begins by suggesting that this might be just an India-centric point, but goes on to indicate that Star Alliance in general maybe looking at low-cost airlines to join them. 

I can understand the logic, at least in India. Low-cost airlines are the big thing, the crowd puller, and so it is perceived to be mass-market. Although, as I wrote some time last year, low cost airlines aren't really as low cost as they're made out to be.

I must admit that I'm quite skeptical and disbelieving of this bit about low-cost airlines joining Star Alliance, particularly in India. Indigo is profitable, but the article clearly says that Star isn't in talks with them. That leaves them with Go Air, which has a rather limited set of route footprints, and SpiceJet, which is bleeding financially (and so I don't expect them to go through this process of integrating with Star Alliance). In any event, I'll be keenly watching this space.