The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) has granted conditional approval for the merger of Vistara with Air India along with Singapore International Airline’s 25.1% stake in the latter.
The approval was granted following commitments from all three airlines that the merged entity will “maintain” capacity, or passenger seats, at pre Covid-19 level (calendar year 2019) for flights between Singapore and Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Thiruvananthpuram.
This followed competition concerns identified by CCCS as the three entities hold majority of the market shares among various airlines offering direct flights on the aforementioned four routes.
“CCCS also found that the price and capacity coordination between the parties arising from the confluence of the transactions would significantly restrict competition on the affected routes,” it said in a press statement on Tuesday.
Though the AI-Vistara merger was expected to conclude by March 2024, it is now expected to conclude only in the first half of 2025, according to Vistara’s CEO Vinod Kannan. The Competition Commission of India had given its approval for the merger in September 2023.
