Air India Passengers Can Travel Across 5,600 German Train Stations On One Ticket

Air India passengers booked to fly to Frankfurt can now include a train connection on Deutsche Bahn to more than 5,000 stations in the country. The airline’s intermodal interline agreement allows travelers to book flights and trains on a single ticket for greater convenience of travel.

Agreement with WorldTicket

Air India has announced that it has entered an intermodal interline agreement with WorldTicket, the exclusive distributor for Europe’s largest railway operator, Deutsche Bahn. With this, Air India customers booked on its flight to Frankfurt can include train connections across 5,600 stations in the country on a single ticket.

Photo: Air India

That’s not all; passengers also have the option to take train connections on Deutsche Bahn to and from Amsterdam, Brussels, and Zurich via Air India’s Frankfurt gateway. The airline has ensured that those booking a flight-train ticket are given the same baggage allowance on the rail routes as Air India offers on its own flights. Nipun Aggarwal, Chief Commercial & Transformation Officer, Air India, commented,

“We observe substantial passenger traffic on our Frankfurt flights that further connects to and from other German cities and towns, and this partnership addresses the needs of an increasing number of such guests. We are delighted to be working with WorldTicket and Deutsche Bahn in this effort.”

India-Germany sector

Air India currently operates daily flights between New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (DEL) and Frankfurt Airport (FRA) on its Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, offering more than 15,000 return trip seats every month.

Photo: Markus Mainka | Shutterstock

Vistara, too, flies to Frankfurt from Delhi and Mumbai, offering 78 monthly return flights, translating to almost 23,000 seats. These flights will likely become part of Air India’s consolidated network after its merger with Vistara.

But the German flag carrier Lufthansa currently dominates the India-Germany sector. The airline operates flights to Frankfurt from Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai. It also flies between Munich and Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. Per Cirium, Lufthansa has more than 350 return flights between the two countries in November, offering more than 122,000 seats.

Increasingly common

Several airlines have integrated train connections into their bookings – earlier this year, Italy’s ITA Airways partnered with Trenitalia to offer a convenient connection between ITA’s network and the Frecciarossa rail service.

KLM, the flag carrier of the Netherlands, offers rail connections between Brussels and Paris using French ‘TGV’ high-speed trains and even a KLM-branded bus connection in Canada to the cities of Montreal and Ottawa.

Photo: Fasttailwind | Shutterstock

Read more: What are air-rail tickets, and which airlines offer them?

Like Air India, Lufthansa also includes the option to book Deutsche Bahn tickets that “facilitate an optimal connection with short transfer times” between the national airline’s hub at Frankfurt Airport (FRA) and various cities in the country.

Have you ever booked flights and trains on a single ticket? Did it make your trip more convenient? Please let us know in the comment section.