kabarsula Air India promises direct advisor portal as fleet refresh continues bandar SLOT INDONESIA

Air India has promised a new direct portal for Australian advisors as part of its ongoing transformation plan, as it continues to refurbish its existing fleet and awaits delivery of one new aircraft a week from 2027.

Global head of sales Manish Puri is in Melbourne to share details of the airline’s growing commitment to the Australian market and its vision for future expansion.

He said the focus for Australia will include new product entering the Sydney market in the first quarter of 2027, continuing upgrades across the fleet – from the app and digital entertainment to food and beverage – and an expansion of its revived hub-and-spoke offering to more Indian cities.

Asked by Travel Weekly what Air India was doing for Australian advisors, including commissions, incentives and NDC or direct connect access, Puri said the airline wanted to grow direct sales but travel partners remained “a very integral part of our ecosystem”.

“We expect our travel partners to be our extended arm, whether they are OTAs, whether they are TMCs, whether they are consolidators,” he said. “We feel that there is a limit to what we can sell directly.”

Air India has launched a direct portal for partners who do not have their own website or do not want to work through NDC, and Puri said it would be “coming very soon in this market”. Agents will log in through the airline’s website and use NDC from there. He said Air India moved to NDC within two years of switching to Amadeus in 2022, and all three GDSs are now “Air India ready”.

Fleet renewal and refurbs

Air India now flies about 177 aircraft, with low-cost arm Air India Express operating about 110, and has almost 600 new aircraft on order.

Wide-body deliveries have been slower than planned. Puri said the airline expected 25 by December 2025, but “by December 25, we got zero”. The first line-fit 787-9 arrived in January, four new aircraft have been delivered since, and three more are due by March 2027.

From 2027, Air India expects between 50 and 55 deliveries a year, a mix of narrow-bodies and wide-bodies.

“That means one aircraft gets delivered to us every seven days,” Puri said, with deliveries ramping up through to 2032.

Meanwhile, the retrofit program continues. All 104 narrow-bodies in the program now have a uniform three-cabin layout, 787 retrofits are under way, and almost 50 per cent of the wide-body fleet is new or refurbished. Puri said that figure should reach 75 per cent by the end of 2027.

What’s next for Australia

Air India now operates 11 weekly flights from Delhi to both Melbourne and Sydney, up from four each over the northern summer.

A refurbished 777-300ER with 40 business class seats and eight first class suites and 280 seats in economy has flown to Melbourne since July. Sydney is due to get upgraded product in February or March. Puri said the airline held its first 360-degree marketing campaign in Australia only once the new aircraft arrived.

“We didn’t want to do a PPT presentation of a beautiful aircraft, and the experience when they’re flying was not that great,” he said.

Puri said the new product is central to lifting corporate traffic from about 10 per cent of Australian business to 25 per cent, and he pointed to the airline’s global corporate contracts as a base to build on.

Easier ways to connect

Puri called the revived hub-and-spoke model, branded easy connect, a “game changer”. Passengers can now be through-checked from Australia to Ahmedabad, Amritsar or Varanasi, clearing customs and immigration at their final destination rather than in Delhi. The minimum connection time at Delhi falls from three hours to 60 minutes.

The airline’s share of Melbourne–Amritsar travel rose from 32 per cent to 55 per cent after the service launched in September, according to Puri. He said 10 to 12 more cities should be added within six months, including leisure destinations such as Goa, Kochi, Guwahati, Pune and Kolkata.

Visiting friends and relatives (VFR) still accounts for almost 60 per cent of Air India’s Australian traffic, but Puri said the airline wants a broader mix, naming leisure, students and Europe-bound travellers. Air India signed an MOU with India’s Ministry of Tourism about two months ago to co-brand with the Incredible India campaign which will be revived.

Pressed on Perth (PER) and Western Sydney International (WSI), he said “how and when the new cities will come is still not decided”. The airline’s initial intention is to densify its existing network, he said, and the open skies agreement means it needs no further permission to add capacity.

Reputation

Puri said Air India’s wide-body net promoter score (NPS) has moved from minus 45 to between plus 37 and plus 40. On Australian services it climbed from minus 28 to plus 16 after the 777-300ER arrived.

Asked about Google review scores of 1.2 out of five for both Sydney and Melbourne, he said “transformations are not done in a very short time” and that the airline still has work to do. He expects the experience to improve further once retrofitted 787s reach both cities.