Case Study: Air India achieves profitable turnaround and Star Alliance membership with SITA's Horizon PSS

Air India - Customer Case Study

Air India, India’s national carrier, faced a complex turnaround after its 2007 merger with Indian Airlines, rising competition and the need to modernize systems to meet global alliance standards. To support its 2010 recovery plan the airline required a migration of its IT platform and a new Passenger Service System; it partnered with SITA to deliver that transformation using SITA’s Horizon® PSS and related services.

SITA implemented a full Horizon® PSS suite (core reservations/inventory/ticketing, e‑commerce and iTravel, Horizon® Loyalty, Revenue Integrity, Business Intelligence plus connectivity and baggage/fare services) and completed the IT migration in 2011. The upgrade enabled Air India to join Star Alliance in 2014, helped passengers grow from 12.5M (2012) to 18.5M (2015), supported an operational profit of INR 100 Crores (USD 15M) in FY2015‑16 and a projected return to cash profitability by 2018, and generated an estimated US$3.4M outbound and US$2.9M inbound in additional alliance revenues (152,000 alliance passengers in 2015). Key KPIs improved—load factor rose from 68% (2011) to 82.2% (Apr–Jun 2016) and on‑time performance exceeded 80%—and SITA was recognized with an Excellence Award for its contribution.

Air India

Ashwani Lohani

Chairman and Managing Director