Loss-making Air India was acquired by Tata Group in January 2022 and the airline is in the middle of an ambitious transformation plan.
Nipun Aggarwal, Chief Commercial Officer of Air India and Chairman of Air India Express, said there have been “tonnes of learning” in the last few years and that it was a complex as well as challenging” project.
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“I think this industry itself has gone through several challenges. And we have been hit by multiple black swan events, which I don’t think anybody could have forecasted when we started this transformation journey.
“The supply chain issues, the airspace issues, the oil price volatility, and the geopolitical issues,” he said.
Aggarwal, who spoke after a panel discussion in Abu Dhabi on July 15, said the group was dealing with the issues and added that “we are on track with our transformation programme”.Air India has faced multiple headwinds, including the fatal crash of its Dreamliner last June that killed 260 people.
The airline has embarked on an ambitious five-year transformation plan and Aggarwal said most of the planned things are pretty much happening, including fleet modernisation and investments in MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul).
On the other hand, there have been delays in aircraft deliveries and retrofits.
“We have been hit by these external events, which have kind of badly hit us in ways that we could have never imagined. But we are on track, we will get there.
“We are very optimistic. It may take a little longer, but we will get there,” he said.
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The comments also came amid reports suggesting that the transformation plan could be delayed.
Air India Group has an order book of almost 600 aircraft and less than 10 per cent of them have been delivered. The order book will run till the middle of the next decade.
“We will be adding 50 to 60 aircraft every year for the next seven to eight years… the deliveries will pick up pace from the end of this year and then from next year onwards, we have our steady stream of aircraft coming in, both wide-body and narrow-body. About 10-15 wide-bodies and 45 to 50 narrow-bodies every year,” Aggarwal said.
In the next 18 months, he said the group should be getting almost 50-60 aircraft.
While Air India Express is expected to complete the retrofitting of all its planes into a single harmonised fleet by March next year, Air India’s wide-body aircraft are anticipated to be retrofitted in the next two to three years.
According to Aggarwal, the retrofit of Dreamliners or Boeing 787s would happen by the middle of next year while that of Boeing 777s would take a little longer.
” We are already getting deliveries of (Boeing) MAX 8 that remains on track. We will be amongst the first few customers to get MAX 10 deliveries and that is awaiting certification. It’s in very advanced stages and hopefully that will start sometime next year, early next year,” he said.
Air India has been facing operational issues with some of its legacy wide-body aircraft.
“We have been through that period where we have to sustain the older aircraft, older cabins. That has been a very painful period for us but now that is behind us. The fleet modernisation and upgradation is picking up pace now.
“Hopefully, by the beginning of the next financial year, we will be a much better situation,” Air India’s Chief Commercial Officer said.
Currently, Air India and Air India Express together have more than 290 planes.
In recent months, Air India has curtailed some of its services due to high oil prices and other factors in the wake of the West Asia conflict.
Aggarwal said Air India is restoring the network from the second half of this year.
“We took some curtailment in the network in the first half of this year, but by and large now we are restoring the network from second half of this year, all Middle East already we are back to 90 per cent and in Europe and the US whatever curtailments we have taken, were taken August-September end, most of those flights are already back on sale now…
“We will be back to where we were pre-war in a couple of months from now,” he said.
Meanwhile, Air India is investing in improving customer experience across various touch points such as having new service standards for the crew and the airport staff.
“No matter how much hardware you upgrade, unless you have a good software to run that hardware, it will not mean much. We are investing a lot of money in building system, process, people capability across the organisation so that we can deliver a safe, reliable customer experience,” Aggarwal said.