New Delhi: Air India’s (AI) grounding of its Boeing-787 Dreamliners has already started adding to the airlines’ fuel cost by around Rs 40 lakh daily, apart from forcing changes in flight schedules, said a senior Air India official. It has been a week since the United States’ regulator, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), asked airlines around the world to ground B787s due to battery problems.
“Though the upward movement of fuel bills is hardly one per cent of Air India’s annual fuel bill of around Rs 6,700 crore, prolonged grounding will definitely impact us. The impact is not that much as AI has very limited international operations involving B-787s,” said a senior Air India official.
Air India has six Boeing 787s and was operating them on three domestic routes (Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata) and three international ones (Dubai, Frankfurt and Paris). The airline is due to receive two more B787s in January and February. The decision to induct them will hinge on how the US aircraft maker addresses safety concerns.
25/01/13 Disha Kanwar/Business Standard
