Air India could order more planes to support growth in the market

Air India already has an order for 68 new generation aircraft in place. The company still believes that they might need more planes to support the ever growing growth in the Indian aviation market.

The company might need more planes as they are aiming to launch new services to connect more international cities including Washington and Houston.

The domestic market is also booming and this has put a lot of pressure on the airline companies to expand their fleets.

AI CMD V Thulasidas said in a statement on their plans: “From June we will launch nonstop India-US flights on the Boeing 777-200 long range (LR) while the three other carriers who offer this service are using extended range versions. Only some carriers like Emirates and Singapore Airlines have this aircraft in the region. So the level of comfort offered by the LR version is going to be higher with AI new planes and we expect the number of passengers to be much higher than anticipated earlier.”

Thulasidas added: “I have set up a group of top officials to examine this issue to find how many more LRs could be required. We will even look at the A 380 as an option. Since future strategy has to be spread out of Delhi and Mumbai alone to smaller cities, whether such big planes can be filled up or not has to be examined.”