With its new look and unique features, airindiaexpress.com attracts more bookings

New Delhi : Air India Express and AirAsia India, two subsidiary airlines of Air India, have unified their customer interface at airindiaexpress.com, which has seen a surge in visitors within days of launch with the platform, contributing over 25% of international flight revenue on the first day itself. The launch of airindiaexpress.com marked a significant step in the integration of Air India Express and AirAsia India, allowing passengers of both airlines to use a single portal for all of their flight-related needs. Air India Express’ new website, airindiaexpress.com, is based on the technology behind Tata Consultancy Services and Tata Digital’s award-winning AirAsia India website and offers a vastly improved booking, support, and travel experience for Air India Express’ customers.

The launch of the new website was made possible by the two airlines’ transition to a shared reservations and check-in system.

After the reservation system went live successfully, the airline entities shifted their attention to a phased transition to a unified airport check-in system across all international terminals in India and then the rest of the global network.

Some of the salient features of airindiaexpress.com include:

• Single Sign On (SSO) credentials, integrated with Tata Neu and other participating brands of the Tata NeuPass rewards programme
• Personalised account profile with personal details, travel documents, saved family & friends for single click addition of guests to bookings, GST details for SMEs, past and upcoming bookings and personalised offers and vouchers
• E-commerce style shopping cart, integrated with single sign-on, enables users to seamlessly continue their booking if they leave midway
• A single page vertically stacked accordion-style booking flow, minimising the time between flight search and payments, providing a super-fast and efficient booking experience
• An integrated booking widget offering special fares and benefits for different passenger profiles, including senior citizens, students, doctors and nurses and members of the armed forces and their dependants, ensuring personalised offerings for flyers on the same PNR
• The option to use gender-neutral honorifics for each passenger when booking
• Xpress Check-in – Fastest in the industry 5-second check-in which is already scoring global benchmark level Net Promoter Scores with over 80% of users scoring it a 9 or 10, and stating they would recommend it to their friends and family.

Nearly half the bookings on airindiaexpress.com have been from international markets, with Dubai being the largest source city of traffic and other top international sources of traffic being Abu Dhabi, Doha, Sharjah, and Singapore. Domestic traffic and bookings on the platform have come from metro markets like Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, reflecting the domestic network and hubs of AirAsia India.

As part of the integration, brand communications and support have also moved to common social media handles on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Online reputation management tools indicate that the integrated social media handles have the highest social reputation score amongst all Indian airlines, driven by faster response and resolution times and massive positive sentiment and feedback on the user experience of the new website and support channels. Advanced AI-powered conversational and multilingual chatbot Tia is also providing seamless 24*7 customer support for both airlines on a common WhatsApp number, Facebook Messenger and on the common website.

With a unified sustainability strategy, the website also offers flyers the opportunity to offset their carbon footprint by planting a tree for every booking, with a geo-location tagged URN Certificate.

A travel agent portal, built and accessible from the same platform, for corporate and retail travel agents in the largely disaggregated market is another key offering of the platform. The travel agent portal offers automated fund upload options, eliminating the need for manual intervention. The platform is also fully automated, from fetching fares to negotiations, enabling travel agents to handle individual and group bookings with ease.

Commenting on the warm response to the integrated platform, Mr. Aloke Singh, Managing Director, Air India Express and AirAsia India said, “The initial phase of integration of Air India Express and AirAsia India has been executed in a robust manner in record time. We have successfully migrated to modern day technology from the legacy systems that were dominant. This migration has been built by leveraging the existing strong attributes of AirAsia India with additional deployment of relevant tech solutions. We are very enthused with the initial response to the newly launched airindiaexpress.com. The unified customer experience is an important aspect of our objective of showcasing the larger strength and scale of the Air India network. We are working on adding even more unique features and integrated service which will deliver enhanced experience and strengthen our position in the minds of the customers.”

AirAsia India flies to 19 destinations across the country while Air India Express operates to 14 international destinations from 20 Indian cities.

About Air India Express:

Air India Express, launched in 2005, is India’s first international budget carrier and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India. It meets the need for affordable services on short and medium-haul routes connecting smaller Indian towns directly to the Gulf and South East Asia regions. With 20 Indian cities and 14 international destinations in its network, the airline operates more than 600 flights a week. The airline has a fleet of 26 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft. In January 2022, Air India Express, together with Air India, was successfully privatized, with ownership returning to the Tata group that had initially founded Air India.

About AirAsia India:

AIX Connect Private Limited, formerly known as AirAsia India Private Limited, was launched in 2014 and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India Limited. AirAsia India flies over 50 direct and 100 connecting routes across India, offering plush leather seats, Gourmair hot meals, pioneering in-flight entertainment, and a host of exclusive loyalty benefits for members of the Tata NeuPass rewards program and offers fast bookings, fab deals and fantastic value on its award-winning website and mobile app.