Air India to lease planes for int'l 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 aircraft 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 one and on India-Mauritius -Johannesburg route from December 15.
05/08/07 Press Trust of India/NDTV.com

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Categories: Air India Aug 2007, Foreign Aug 2007