Tatas Plan To Beef Up Air India Fleet

Air India is in the final stages of closing orders for around 200 narrow body and widebody jets, it is planning to take aircraft from the secondary lease market to beef up capacity in the short term. Tata Group has chalked out an aggressive expansion plan for Air India and Air India Express, inducting six Boeing 777200 aircraft and 25 Airbus A320 Neos by the first quarter of next year. Currently, Tata Group's three airlines Air India, AirAsia India, and Vistara - hold a 24 per cent share of the Indian aviation market.

Boeing 777 aircraft will be leased from US airline Delta, which had phased out 18 of those aircraft following the pandemic. The aircraft will join the fleet by October and will be used to increase flights on the India-US route, which is one of the most profitable for the airline.

These aircraft have long range and can connect cities major cities in India including Bengaluru and Hyderabad to US west coast without any payload penalty (which is a lower number of seats to make up for the longer distance to be travelled), helping the airline increase its connectivity to the US and Canada during the holiday season.

According to ch-aviation "Delta Air Lines retired ten B777-200(LR)s and eight B777-200(ER)s during the COVID-19 pandemic. Three -200(LR) s are due to be converted into freighters for Cargojet Airways, while one-200(ER) has been acquired by the Arizona Cardinals football franchise and is operated by Jet Aviation Flight Services (Teterboro). The remaining aircraft are in storage. Air India did not clarify which of the two variants it would add, and did not respond to ch-aviation's request for comment. It currently operates three -200(LR)s but is planning to sell them. According to earlier reports, the dry-lease of the B777s will be for two years."

The narrow-body A320 Neo jets, which will be leased from the secondary market, will start joining the fleet starting next year and help to increase capacity on domestic routes.

These aircraft are being leased for a shorter duration to bridge the gap till new aircraft join.

New aircraft induction will take time as the delivery schedule of both Airbus and Boeing have available slots till the end of 2024. The airline is also getting 10 grounded wide-body aircraft back to service by early 2023, they said. Its wide-body fleet currently stands at 43, of which 33 are operational.