AI plans leased planes on long routes

New Delhi: With shortage of aircraft affecting its services on long-haul routes, Air India has charted out plans to induct leased planes to maintain its international schedules and launch new routes.
The current fleet was short by one aircraft and the airline was operating without a standby plane, severely affecting its punctuality and schedule integrity, official sources said. To handle the situation, Air India has recently held negotiations to lease planes after it received offers for wet-lease of two Boeing 747-400s and two Airbus A340-300s.
The two Boeing jets would replace similar planes to maintain the present daily Mumbai-Chicago flight, while the Airbus would be deployed on Dhaka-Kolkata-London and Mumbai-London routes. Two A330s are also being leased for deployment on the new India-Hong Kong route from November 1 and on India-Mauritius.
The aircraft — Boeing-767 and A-310s — would be released due to the deployment of the leased planes. These jets would be utilised for enhancing operations to the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong, for which the carrier has got new bilateral entitlements.
06/08/07 PTI/Economic Times

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Categories: Air India Aug 2007, Foreign Aug 2007