In order to expand its international flight operations, Tata group-owned Air India said it has leased six more wide-body B777300ER planes.
In September this year, Air India had already inducted 30 planes- 21 narrow-body A320neo, four narrow-body A321neo, and five wide-body B777-200 LRs. These six new inductees are in addition to these 30 planes.
These six new planes are scheduled to be inducted by June 2023, while the earlier leased 30 planes are scheduled to be inducted by end of 2023. This will also give a major boost to the overall architecture of flights from USA to India.
Furthermore, in addition to leasing these planes, Air India has started discussions with Boeing and Airbus to place a sizeable aircraft order in order to expand further in international flight operations partucualry flights from USA to India.
In order to create a single full-service Airline, the Tata group and Singapore Airlines have already announced the merger of Vistara into Air India last week. The SIA will hold 25.2 percent equity in the new entity. Air Asia India will also merge with Air India express to create a single low-cost subsidiary of Air India.
Air India is pushing vigorously for its international expansion during the last few months and it surely will impact the best travel offers and travel deals online for the customers.
According to aviation analytics company Cirium’s data, Air India will operate 809 international flights per week in December, which represents around a 22 percent increase from what it operated in June.
Currently, Air India has a fleet size of 114 planes. The carrier is expected to increase its fleet size to 150 by the end of 2023 with the new addition of 36 leased aircraft (30 earlier and 6 now).
On Monday, the company announced that it would induct six B777300ER aircraft in the first half of 2023.
Air India’s new B777-300ERs will have four class configurations of first, business, premium economy, and economy classes. We will deploy these to connect Indian metro cities with more international destinations. In the near future, we will witness a major boost in flights from the USA to India.
A wide-body plane comes with a bigger fuel tank, allowing the airline to operate nonstop flights on longer routes such as India-US and India-Canada.
The additional aircraft leases will support the company’s near-term growth even as company finalizes plans to refresh and significantly grow its long-term fleet. Campbell Wilson, CEO and managing director of Air India added.
Brendon Sobie from one of the consultancy firms Sobie aviation noted that in the international market. Air India is in a sweet spot due to the slow restoration of international capacity to India by many foreign airlines because of Russian airspace issues and overall global issues impacting airlines.
Air India can easily access Russian airspace, giving it an advantage on long-haul flights to North America. They also does not have some of the manpower or other issues that airline face in other markets.
