Air India sees growth from domestic, short int'l flights in 2025: CEO

Air India will see most of the air traffic growth coming from domestic and short-haul international operations in 2025 as more narrow-body planes are joining the fleet and legacy wide-body aircraft will be going for retrofit next year, the airline's chief Campbell Wilson said on Thursday.

The Tata Group-owned airline, which has embarked on a five-year transformation journey, expects to have a fleet of 400 planes by 2027.

Currently, the total fleet strength of Air India Group, including Air India Express, is around 300 aircraft.

During a select media briefing, Wilson, who has been at the helm of Air India for more than two years, said the airline group has a domestic market share of around 29 per cent and 55 per cent on the metro to metro routes.

On top 120 domestic routes, the market share is about 40 per cent, he said.

According to him, the retrofit of legacy wide-body aircraft will start in early 2025.

"We had hoped to start retrofit of 787s and 777s by now. Unfortunately, the global supply chains in some areas are still recovering and seats in particular are a challenge...

"Once it (retrofit) starts in 2025, we will be doing 3-4 aircraft every month until the full legacy 40 wide-body aircraft are completed," Wilson said.

About growth for 2025, he said it will primarily come from domestic and short-haul international flights as most of the aircraft that are coming in are narrow-body ones.

"We are also taking the aircraft for the refit programme. So, the number of wide-body aircraft available will shrink a little bit," he added.

As part of Tata Group consolidating its airline business, Air India has merged Vistara with itself and AIX Connect has been integrated with Air India Express.

The CEO and MD of Air India noted that there is a delay in getting all the 50 white tail aircraft, which were earlier expected to join the fleet by December this year.

Out of the total 50 white tail Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, at least 35 have joined the fleet. These planes are being operated by Air India Express.

"50 white tail aircraft, all of them were to come by December this year... They will stretch up to June next year and that in itself has a little bit of impact...," Wilson said while responding to a query about delays due to issues at Boeing, including the recent strike.

"It is not clear for how long the impact will be. Six months is reasonable for some aircraft...," he said.

Generally, white tail planes are those that were originally manufactured for a particular airline and later taken by another airline.