Air India (IATA AI) is a full-service carrier based in India, a member of the Star Alliance alliance. Across the corridors catalogued here it flies 4 routes from African airports, reaching 2 destinations in 1 country. Most of these are business and minority-diaspora corridors. Its standard checked-baggage baseline is 25 kg. In its home African markets brand strength rates 6/10.
At a glance
3 catalogued corridors on this site are flown by Air India (AI), a full-service carrier based in India and a member of Star Alliance, with a 25 kg checked-baggage baseline. 0 of those corridors are flagged in our route file as labour-migration or diaspora routes.
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| IATA code | AI |
| Home country | India |
| Alliance | Star Alliance |
| Carrier type | full-service |
| Checked-baggage baseline | 25 kg |
| Diaspora / migrant baggage uplift | none published |
| Hajj / Umrah charter service | No |
| Brand strength (home markets) | 6/10 |
An advertised baseline and a booked allowance are different objects. Air India publishes the 25 kg figure for standard economy while also selling stripped fare families below it — and those cheaper buckets are exactly what a fare cache surfaces first. Confirm against your own booking class before packing to any published number.
Brand strength of 6/10 in this table is our own editorial rating of how the carrier is regarded in its home African markets — reliability reputation, distribution reach and how often travellers ask for it by name. It is not an on-time-performance statistic, not a safety rating and not a customer-satisfaction survey. It is useful for ranking carriers on a corridor page against each other, and for nothing else.
Routes Air India flies from Africa — 4 corridors
3 catalogued corridors carry Air India in our route file, reaching 2 destinations and totalling about 11 weekly departures, with block times from 5.5 h to 9.0 h. 0 of them are flagged as labour-migration or diaspora corridors in our route file. This is the African-outbound catalogue, not the airline’s global network.
| Route | Freq/wk | Block (h) | Market low (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nairobi (NBO) → Mumbai (BOM) | ~5 | ~5.5 | $637 |
| Johannesburg (JNB) → Delhi (DEL) | ~3 | ~9.0 | — |
| Johannesburg (JNB) → Mumbai (BOM) | ~3 | ~8.5 | — |
| Lagos (LOS) → Delhi (DEL) | — | — | — |
The USD market-low column is the cheapest fare our Travelpayouts cache has seen on that corridor across all carriers, not a Air India-only price; use it as a floor when comparing.
By audience the network here skews to the business / Indian-African / Lebanese-African corridor — 3 in cluster D. Those clusters are this site’s own segmentation of African outbound demand, used to decide what a corridor page emphasises: pilgrimage timing on cluster B, baggage and December peaks on cluster A, schedule reliability on business corridors.
The market-low column in the route table is not a Air India price. It is the cheapest quote our Travelpayouts cache has recorded on that corridor across every carrier and booking gate, so on a competitive route it may well belong to a competitor. Use it as a floor when judging whether a Air India quote is fair, not as evidence of what this airline charges.
Passenger compensation rights
1 instrument covers Air India across most of its catalogued network: the Montreal Convention 1999, which caps baggage and provable delay losses at about 1,288 SDR per passenger (the Special Drawing Right cap, roughly $1,700 USD at recent IMF rates). No EU261-style fixed cash compensation scheme reaches these corridors, so a long delay carries no statutory payout.
Air India’s catalogued African routes sit outside the EU261/UK261/GACA/APPR/DOT cash-compensation schemes; the Montreal Convention still covers baggage loss and provable delay losses on any international sector.
| Regime | When it applies | Remedy for a long delay / cancellation |
|---|---|---|
| Montreal Convention 1999 | Any international itinerary — baggage and delay losses. | Compensation for lost, damaged or delayed baggage and provable losses caused by delay, up to about 1,288 SDR per passenger. |
| Regime | When it applies | Remedy for a long delay / cancellation |
|---|
What does not cover a Air India itinerary is worth stating plainly, because claim services will open a file regardless: EU261 — no catalogued corridor here touches an EU/EEA airport, and carrier nationality alone never triggers it, UK261 — no leg touches a UK airport, US DOT rules — no United States endpoint and Canada’s APPR — no Canadian endpoint. Filing under the wrong scheme costs weeks and ends in a rejection. Match the regulation to the departure airport and the operating carrier first, then claim.
When Air India is the right choice
3 catalogued corridors is the practical scope of this decision: Air India is worth choosing where it flies your corridor nonstop, where its 25 kg baseline beats the alternative, and where Star Alliance earning matters to you. Compare the block-time column, not only the price column.
You should choose Air India for its included 25 kg allowance and through-checked bags on connecting itineraries; frequent flyers earn and burn across the Star Alliance network. Compare it against the other carriers on each corridor in the route table above before booking Air India.
The honest counter-case first. A single carrier is rarely the right answer on every corridor, and on a route where Air India connects while a competitor flies nonstop, the competitor usually wins on total elapsed time even at a higher fare. Compare the block-time column, not just the price column, on each corridor page — the difference between a nonstop and a one-stop routing on this site’s long-haul corridors is regularly eight hours or more.
FAQ
What is Air India’s checked baggage allowance? Air India’s checked-baggage baseline is 25 kg, normally included in its standard fares.
Is Air India part of an airline alliance? Air India is a member of the Star Alliance alliance.
What kind of airline is Air India? Air India (AI) is a full-service carrier from India.
How many routes does Air India fly from Africa? Air India operates 4 routes from African airports catalogued here — see the list above; each links to a route guide.
Can I claim compensation on a Air India flight? Air India’s African routes carry no fixed cash-compensation scheme, but the Montreal Convention covers baggage loss and provable delay losses.
What is the cheapest route Air India flies from Africa? In our fare cache the lowest market fare on a Air India corridor is about $637 on Nairobi–Mumbai (NBO-BOM); prices move with season, so check live fares before booking.
Sources
1 primary source cited on this page is regulator and government material, not secondary summaries. Each is listed with what it actually governs, so a claim on this page can be checked against the instrument it comes from. Where a value is missing from our own files we leave the cell blank rather than estimate it.
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AirHelp — flight-compensation claims — a commercial claims service, cited as the industry explainer alongside the regulator rather than instead of it.
The sourcing rule here is simple: a regulator’s own text for anything with legal effect, and a commercial explainer only as a secondary reading beside it. Amounts stay denominated as the instrument denominates them — euro, pound, Canadian dollar, SDR — even though every fare on this site is quoted in USD, because a converted tariff is a moving number pretending to be a fixed one.
Fares, frequencies, block times, baggage baselines and coordinates on this page come from this site’s own data files rather than from an external source: a route file, a carrier file, an airport file, a Travelpayouts fare cache and a weekly fare-history log covering 161 corridors. Where a value is missing we leave the cell blank instead of estimating it, which is why some tables have dashes.
Related
1 related page follow. Each is linked because it shares an endpoint, a carrier, a country or an audience cluster with this one — the annotations say what each adds, so the ones that do not apply to your trip can be skipped.
- Flights to India — country landing page: 4 catalogued corridors from African airports, carriers, visa row and the USD fare floor we have on file.
The relationship behind each link is structural: a common origin or destination airport, a common operating carrier, a common country, or the same audience cluster in our segmentation. No keyword matching is involved, so an unexpected entry here usually means a shared hub or a shared airline rather than a shared destination.
The link graph on this site is structural rather than lexical: pages connect through shared airports, shared operating carriers, shared countries and shared audience clusters. An entry that looks off-topic is usually the one that shares your airline or your transfer hub — which is the connection that matters when a schedule breaks.