Air India is currently plotting a massive redevelopment of their airline, including acquiring hundreds of Airbus and Boeing aircraft.
A deal finalised over the 2023 Paris Airshow will see 470 aircraft arrive in the future with a mixture of narrowbodies and widebodies included.
However, plans to acquire these aircraft have been accelerated substantially thanks to aircraft initially destined for Chinese and Russian customers seeing a diversion on their destination due to sanctions or ongoing disputes and legal difficulties.
Leeham News reports that 55 737 MAX aircraft initially destined for Chinese customers will now head towards India.
A similar fate was highly discussed during the Qatar Airways A350 saga and the suspension of their deliveries, with the potential of these falling to other customers who needed jets sooner.
The Airbus A350 and Boeing 737 MAX will look to join the airline’s operations later this year, with preparations well underway for the first A350 delivery.
Air India believes there’s room in the market to grow and become once more a leading choice for flying within India and globally. A lot of work must be done for this transformation to take place. However, Tata Group, the new owners of Air India, see the addition of hundreds of new jets as a pivotal step.
The Indian airline will continue to ramp up preparations for the first of the next-generation aircraft to arrive by ensuring staff are as optimised as possible for the jet they’ll call home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Fowkes is a Melbourne-based aviation analyst and journalist with over a decade of industry experience. As founder of Dj’s Aviation, he delivers trusted analysis on aircraft, airline strategy and global aviation trends for djsaviation.net
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I can’t understand why the Tatas have invested their money into this airline.
Air India has no proper airline culture, no set protocols, happy go lucky attitude to all matters, lack of proper maintenence on planes and general loose manangement.
Can the Tatas pull off a 700 % improvement of the airline as a whole? They should have started their own airline. Running a defunct and blase Air India is impossible in my opinion despite the new Aircraft etc.
They need to fire the whole staff and replace with new.
It was JRD Tata who poineered airmail and then airlines business, Air India was started by him but was nationalised by Pt Nehru then PM who was on socialist agenda for growth. Air India back to Tata last year, has a great future we hope. FYI Tata are also run two other airlines Air Asia India and Vistara