Passengers planning to fly Air India may face some problems tomorrow as the airline's website will remain shut for about 16 hours to changeover from the double code booking system to a single code one. The national carrier had on Thursday announced that all its flights and their tickets would now on bear the single code of 'AI', instead of two codes -- 'AI' for international travel and 'IC' for domestic.
The website would remain shut from 0100 hours to 1700 hours tomorrow as part of the integration process, sources said. The national carrier will have a single code for all its domestic and international flights from Sunday.
During the integration process, passengers will not be able to get their PNR (Passenger Name Record) status and may also face problems in booking their tickets through the airline's website.
An Air India official, however, said that the website's features like booking of tickets and flight status will be available during this period. "But flyers would be able to get the status of their PNR," the official said.
Air India would be operating all its domestic and international flights with single code (AI) from Sunday, when the codes of all 'IC' coded flights would change to 'AI'.
Though the erstwhile national domestic carrier Indian Airlines (IA) was merged with erstwhile international carrier Air India (AI) in 2007, the merged Air India (AI) was operating its domestic and international flights with their old flight and IATA codes.
The official said passengers can contact the airline's toll free number 18001801407 to check their revised flight number and also about their PNR status. Having two separate flight and IATA codes, post amalgamation, was the biggest hindrance for the national carrier to become a STAR alliance member.
The STAR alliance members has Lufthansa, Continental Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Swiss Air, Singapore Airlines, Air China, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, South Africa Airways and others having 21,000 daily departures at 1160 airports in 181 countries.
"This amalgamation will be a major step in Air India becoming an active partner of STAR alliance which has the most respected member airlines," an Air India spokesperson had said.
