The Chairman and Managing Director of Air India, Rohit Nandan, and the entire airline board will travel on the Boeing 787 aircraft on a scheduled flight between Delhi and Kolkata on Wednesday.
This will be the first commercial flight since the six aircraft in Air India’s fleet were grounded in January this year after the aviation authority, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, received a communication from its American counterpart, the Federal Aviation Administration, pointing to problems with the aircraft’s battery. The order grounding the fleet was lifted earlier this month.
The last time that a Government airline grounded its fleet was in 1990 when a few days after the crash of an Airbus A-320 aircraft in Bangalore, Indian Airlines grounded all its 14 Airbus aircraft. Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh announced that of the six Boeing 787 in Air India’s fleet, two have been modified for commercial operations. “All six aircraft will be ready by the end of the month. Domestic flights with the aircraft will restart on May 15 while international operations will be re-launched on May 22,” he said.
The airline is to get another eight Boeing 787 aircraft by December this year, which will be used to launch services on the Delhi-Birmingham-Delhi and Delhi-Sydney-Melbourne-Delhi routes in August this year and the Delhi-Rome-Milan-Delhi route, which will be launched in October, Singh said.
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