Air India to have 70 new aircraft by March: CEO – Times of India

NEW DELHI: From being a state-owned airline that saw no fleet or personnel augmentation for many years, Air India —now back with founder Tata Group — has been put on the fast track to rapid expansion. The airline will induct 19 wide-body and 50 narrow-body aircraft by next March. To fuel this growth, AI is hiring 550 cabin crew and 50 pilots every month. Inducting new planes will help the airline resolve one of the biggest grouse of customers — dilapidated cabin of the old fleet — and spread its international network with North America and Europe being the priority areas. The airline had recently ordered 470 aircraft, including 70 wide-bodies.
“We will be inducting 19 new wide-body aircraft by the end of next March. (Once that happens) from mid-2024, we will start sending our 40 existing wide-body (27 Boeing 787s and 13 B777s) aircraft for complete refurbishment. Their interiors will be completely scrapped and these planes will get everything brand new from seats to inflight entertainment and onboard Wifi as part of our $400-million upgrade project. By mid-2025, all our twin-aisles will have absolutely new cabin product,” AI MD & CEO Campbell Wilson told TOI.
The new wide-bodies being inducted this fiscal, starting with the Airbus A350s,will have onboard WiFi. While 17 of the 19 twin-aisles will be used for augmenting fleet, AI has recently started talks for inducting two more B777s so that it can retire two wide-bodies.
The narrow-body fleet makeover will be faster with a majority of AI group’s full service single-aisles getting facelift by next September. “We are going to induct 50 single-aisles this fiscal. By September 2024, 75-80% of our full-service single-aisles will be brand new,” he said. The remaining 20-25% will be refurbished for being used by the low-cost arm, AI Express. Which means in two years, AI full-service arm planes would have completely new interiors.
AI had been facing crew shortage due to which this March it had to suspend six of the 47 weekly non-stops to the US. A few of its Airbus A320neo aircraft were also not being used for the same reason. Now with 600 crew joining every month and almost 200 Go First pilots onboard, the crew shortage seems to have been sorted out. “We are reinstating three of those (suspended US) flights this month and the remaining three next month. We are now hiring 5 and 10 times more pilots and cabin crew per month, respectively, than AI used to hire in a year earlier,” Wilson said.
Armed with more A320 pilots, AI has asked Airbus to give it more planes quickly. The reason: Go First, which suspended flights since May 3, had over 80 Airbus A320neo family planes still on order that were yet to delivered butgot no planes in the past several months due to its financial condition. Sources say Go First was to get 8-10 A320neos in the past few months and those delivery slots are available with Airbus. Apart from foreign carriers, both IndiGo and AI have put in requests to get these planes.
“We have spoken to Airbus, seeking faster deliveries and they are yet to decide. We will want to take these planes with CFM engines (Go First used Pratt & Whitney). Airbus can deliver that combination with the required lead time,” he said.