National carrier Air India will terminate its long-standing relationship with several international carriers, including Europe’s largest carrier Air France, KLM, Aeroflot, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Continental and Royal Jordanian, once it joins Star Alliance.
Air India will be terminating its code-sharing contract with ... these airlines by December 2009, as they are members of the competing Sky Team and One World. Air India will join Star Alliance — which is the largest airline consortium with 17,000 daily flights to 897 destinations in 160 countries — next year. Air India, along with Egypt Air and Turkish Airlines, has been accepted as future member of Star Alliance network, which has around 3,000 aircraft in its combined fleet.
“...It will take around 18 months to integrate with Star Alliance and gradually we will terminate our code-sharing contract and frequent flier programmes with a large number of international airlines and regional carriers by 2009.
...,” said a senior Air India executive.
Chanchal Pal Chauhan/Economic Times
Friday, January 25, 2008