Count it in the I told you so section. In April 2019, exactly on the day Jet Airways was crumbling, Air India made an ambitious proposal, to take over 5 of the Boeing 77W aircraft owned by Jet Airways, and operate routes such as Mumbai – London, Mumbai – Dubai, Delhi – London, Delhi – Dubai and Delhi – Singapore with those aircraft. Who did they reach out to? State Bank of India, who, till date has no control over Jet Airways.
Jet Airways Boeing 777-300ER
Now, this seems to be a plot unravelled. Air India has passed on the blame to SBI. Air India says to Mint,
We have submitted our plans (to lease the aircraft) to State Bank of India (SBI) and we are yet to hear from them.
But another publication states,
The engineering unit has done the work around the B777s and found no merit in taking them.
At the point in time, it was our contention, that Air India does not have the slots to operate additional flights. As Karan wrote, then,
To operate additional flights if that’s what Air India is suggesting, you need slots which Air India doesn’t have, sort of. Air India did secure an extra 3x weekly slot pair at London Heathrow for Summer 2019. But they haven’t added any new flights to London Heathrow. We don’t know if they still have those extra slots or not.
We also wrote that Air India has 24 aircraft on the ground, which, if fixed, would be enough to take the load off the airline. Here is the list presented again,
There is now news flow, that Air India has indeed marked INR 500 crores to fix these aircraft, which is money it did not have before. They intend to fix up these aircraft and get them in the air. I’d perhaps advise them not to. It would be too little too late. Because if they haven’t gotten in on the party so far, they will miss out the great opportunities being presented in the next months for flights to London anyway.
One may argue that opportunities continue to present themselves long term, but you also need to be ready to get those opportunities ready first. And perhaps they are, as India’s only widebody operator at this moment, going to take their time to get their act in order. Call it lethargy.
What do you make of this entire Air India episode? Did anyone expect this to play out as stated in the first place?
Regardless of everything. Are they gonna fly ever again??