The Hindu : National : Air India to submit revised fleet acquisition proposal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 24, 2004

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Air India to submit revised fleet acquisition proposal

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, OCT. 23. Air India is working out a composite proposal for fleet acquisition at an estimated cost of Rs. 20,000 crores and is to approach the Union Government for approval next month.

It has been decided to rework the Rs. 10,000 crore fleet acquisition proposal submitted to the previous Government. "We need new types of aircraft than anticipated earlier in view of the launch of Air India Express and also to fly to new destinations. Instead of recasting it, we thought of going for a composite and revised proposal," the Chairman and Managing Director of Air India, V. Thulasidas told The Hindu here.

The original proposal was for dry leasing 28 aircraft to augment flights to various destinations.

Eighteen aircraft will be required for Air India Express, the budget airline to be launched in April 2005and Air India will need more than the remaining 10 aircraft.

"I hope to be able to go back to the Union Government in November with a firm proposal of the number of aircraft required and types of aircraft. We will go to the Centre not for money but for approval. The investment could be the double of what has been envisaged earlier and the number is being worked out", Mr. Thulasidas said.

Non-stop flights

The airline was thinking of introducing non-stop flights to the United States and Mr. Thulasidas said that the aircraft for this purpose was not there in the earlier proposal.

"The AI people have been asked to look at the widest bodied aircraft available today. Earlier, we were fighting shy of Airbus A-380."

The AI has plans for flying to new destinations in the east, especially Australia by resuming flights to Sydney.

"We don't see any great merit in flying non-stop to Australia. We are looking at the option of operating via Singapore. We hope it [is] up and going in 2005."

China: major destination

It considers China as a major destination in the future. "We are flying to Shanghai now and there are plans to step up those flights and also to fly to Beijing. Japan is one country where we would like to fly to more but the Agreement between India and Japan does not unfortunately allow that. We have plans to fly more to Hong Kong. It's one of our existing destinations," he added.

Stating that they were not interested in operating flights to Sri Lanka and Maldives, Mr. Thulasidas said there were plans to operate flights again to Mauritius and South Africa in 2005.

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