Now, only 'Muslim meal' to have halal certificate: Air India

NEW DELHI: With Vistara merging into Air India and its operations growing manifold, the Maharaja has now made it mandatory for passengers to pre-book meals. Accordingly halal certificate will now be only for “Muslim meal” (MOML) which will also have to be pre-booked. Only some sectors like Saudi and Haj flights will have all halal meals.

In an internal circular issued this month AI says: “ Pre-booked meal labelled with MOML sticker is to be treated s a special meal. Halal certificate will be provided only for uplifted MOML meal. All meals on Saudi sectors will be halal and halal certificate will be provided on Jeddah, Dammam, Riyadh, Medina sectors, including Haj flights,” the circular says.

A senior AI official said: “We have always given meal options to passengers for convenience. Now meal service has been streamlined (due to bigger size and scale of AI) and meals need to be pre-booked.” Earlier the relatively smaller AI (pre merger with Vistara) was not very insistent on pre-booking meals.