Air India alters travel policy; economy travel for employees on domestic work trips
An airline official aware of the developments, said that since Tata took over the airline in January 2022, the demand for premium seats had increased
Private carrier Tata Air India on Monday announced changes to its travel policy and said that all employees including airline’s chief executive officer (CEO) Campbell Wilson, during their domestic work travel, would be flying in economy class as against the current rule that has a reserved business class seat for its staff in duty (SOD).
“The change in policy will be effective April 1 for top management (vice president and above) and from June 1 for all the other staff,” an official said.
“With this, we want to ensure that our premium seats, both Business and Premium Economy – for which we are seeing huge demand – are available for booking to our customers first, demonstrating a culture of customer centricity in the new Air India”, Air India spokesperson confirmed.
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An airline official aware of the developments, said that since Tata took over the airline in January 2022, the demand for premium seats had increased.
“It (the demand) for premium seats has grown to more than double now,” he added.
The airline informed about the change in the policy via an email to its employees on Monday.
“The email says that all staff on duty or any employee travelling for work, including the top management will have a confirmed economy seat rather than the current confirmed business class seat,” the airline official said.
“It also specifies that the staff on duty can be upgraded to business or premium economy in case a seat in either of the two sections is confirmed to be vacant for the flight,” another official said.
To be sure, clarity on the number of seats unoccupied in a flight is typically learnt 50 minutes before the flight departure time.
Currently, all the 53 Vistara A320 family aircraft that are being operated by Air India, post-merger, offer premium economy seats to the passengers. Moreover, the airline had inducted 14 new A320Neo aircraft with three class configurations.
“Currently, the airline offers around 50,000 premium economy seats per week. This will increase to 65,000 weekly seats once the retrofit process is completed by October,” an official aware of the development said.
