Air India completes ‘taxi phase’ of its transformation plan

Air India has reached the conclusion of the first phase of its comprehensive five-year transformation plan, Vihaan.AI. A Sanskrit word, Vihaan.AI signifies the dawn of a new era. It has a detailed roadmap for Air India with clear milestones focusing on dramatically growing both its network and fleet, developing a completely revamped customer proposition, and improving reliability and on-time performance among others. Air India completes ‘taxi phase’ of its transformation plan.

During the first phase, which the airline referred to as the taxi phase, Air India placed an order for 470 aircraft

(which could go up to over 800 aircraft if the airline decides to exercise all its options), spent $400 million to completely refurbish existing aircraft apart from the investing $200 million in new IT systems. The airline also revamped menus on domestic and international flights. On international flights the new menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, across all classes, feature a mix of fusion dishes and classics.

The first 31 of the 470 aircraft ordered by the airline will arrive in the second half of this year. They include 25 brand-new Boeing MAX 8s and six Airbus A350-900s aircraft. In some ways, Air India has also been lucky, as the first lot of aircraft coming were earlier to be delivered to customers in Russia and other parts of the world. Due to sanctions, they could not be delivered and will now help Air India to ramp up its operations. The airline also expedited fleet expansion with 36 leased aircraft, including eleven widebodies, being delivered in 2022-23.