Air India plans to lease 4 Boeing along with crew

Mumbai: State-run Air India plans to lease four Boeing aircraft along with its pilots and cabin crew for its no-frill carrier AI Express and take 10 Airbus planes on dry-lease to expand its own network, sources said.
Though the airline had floated tenders in November to dry-lease four Boeing 737-800 for its wholly-owned subsidiary Air India Express for upto five years, an office order was issued last month saying "it has been decided to wet lease four aircraft for Air India Express."
Wet lease is an arrangement in which the lessor provides an aircraft along with the cockpit and cabin crew and pays for its maintenance and insurance. The company which wet leases the plane pays by the hours it is operated. In dry lease, only the aircraft is leased out.
The B-737s were being wet leased "in order to augment capacity to meet the surging demand and also the demands from MPs of Punjab and Kerala to restore the original (flight) schedule," the order signed by AI CMD Arvind Jadhav said.
Air India Express operates mainly across the Gulf and South-east Asia, and currently has a 21-aircraft fleet in which 17 are owned and four are on lease. The wet-lease move has baffled some officials who said that wet leasing was always costlier than dry lease and there was no shortage of pilots in Air India Express.
02/01/11 PTI/Economic Times

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Categories: Air India Budget Jan 2011, Air India Jan 2011