Thursday, September 24, 2015

Dreamliner stripped for spares, grounded

New Delhi: An Air India Dreamliner (VT-AND) has been stripped of parts to keep the other Boeing 787s flying.
While AI did not comment on this issue, sources say the 2012-make aircraft - whose current list price is almost Rs 1,400 crore - is cooling its heels at Mumbai airport since January.
Boeing confirmed that the aircraft has been grounded since "the first quarter of this year."
AI has been facing problems in getting spares on time for the Dreamliner fleet despite the fact that the planes routinely develop snags and keep needing parts. Subsequently, the grounded plane reportedly has almost 400 spare parts missing. The airline currently has 21 dreamliners which it started getting three years back.
Keeping a new aircraft on ground for so many months means a huge loss for AI in terms of lost revenue. "It is unimaginable that a new plane spends months on ground instead of the airline sweating the asset to the maximum and earning money from it. The aviation ministry had last year asked Boeing to not only make spares available in time but fly them at its cost to wherever an AI Dreamliner is grounded," said a source.
VT-AND has been grounded for nearly nine months making it the longest grounding of any Dreamliner globally.
24/09/15 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
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