Air India set to lease 14 Airbus A320s

National carrier Air India plans to dry lease 14 narrow bodied Airbus A- 320 planes for up to six years in a phased manner from the current financial year.

The carrier on Thursday re- issued a tender for leasing Airbus A320 planes which are not more than six years old. Under a dry lease agreement, the leasing company provides the aircraft and airlines use their own pilots and engineers to fly and maintain the plane.

As per the tender, the selected lessors should be able to supply on dry lease up to three of these planes in 2014- 15, up to five till 2015- 16 and six till 2016- 17.

These planes were being acquired in an all- economy configuration with 188 seats. Airlines said this will help it to meet the rising demand for low cost operations that has heightened competition on domestic routes.

The airline has reissued tender as it was not able to get the requisite number of new aircraft for delivery next year.

Air India (erstwhile Indian Airlines) was one of the launch operators of the A320 aircraft and had purchased 31 aircrafts between 1989 to 1993.

Again between 2006 and 2010, the airline bought 43 A320 family aircraft that includes A319 and A321.

Air India is also reconfiguring its A321 aircraft to reduce business class seats from 20 to 12 and increase Economy seating the officials said, adding that four A320 and six A321 have already been reconfigured.

Expecting deliveries of five more Dreamliners between May and November, the national carrier is raising a bridge loan of $ 500 million to finance the purchase of four of these aircraft and use them to launch flights to new destinations like Moscow, Rome and Milan. Air India was awaiting certain approvals for the launch of these flights planned for later this year. The national carrier, which has already inducted 13 Boeing 787 Dreamliners, expects deliveries of two more such planes in May, while another three of the total 27 ordered are slated to be delivered by Boeing in June, August and November.

Courtesy: Mail Today