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.
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.
As the national carrier starts inducting aircraft from Boeing, it has started the non-stop Mumbai-New York flight on August 1 and will launch the direct Delhi-New York (JFK Airport) flight from January 7 next year. A direct thrice-a-week Bangalore-San Francisco flight will start in May next year.
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