Two months after Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari had said Boeing had disassociated itself with the much-delayed USD 100-million MRO facility in Nagpur, the American planemaker has said it has completed the work and handed over the facility to Air India last month.
"Let me inform you that we have now nothing to do with the MRO (maintenance, repair & overhaul) facility at Nagpur as we recently handed over the facility to Air India under the 2005 agreement. The aviation regulator DGCA has also given its approvals to the facility," Boeing senior vice-president for sales (commercial airplanes) for Asia-Pacific & India Dinesh A Keskar told reporters here over the weekend.
He blamed for the delay in building the 2.6-km taxiway connecting the facility to the airport for which the land acquisition was a contentious issue.
The American planemaker was to deliver the facility long back under the offset clause agreed up on by the government and the company when Air India ordered a multi-billion dollar 113 aircraft purchase deal inked in FY06.
Under the agreement, Boeing was to build and operate the MRO for Air India. However the project got delayed first by lack of land availability and then by the dithering from the American company.
Early June this year, Gadkari had said "Boeing, which had invested USD100 million in the MRO, had disassociated itself with the facility citing financial constraints."
The MRO is at the special economic zone of the Multi-Modal International Passenger and Cargo Hub (Mihan) in Nagpur and will start maintenance work on Air India aircraft to begin with and then take outside work.
The facility has two 100x100 metre hangars, to accommodate wide-body aircraft like Boeing 777s and 747-800s and another 24,000 sqm area for the allied work. Each of the two hangars can house four wide-bodied aircraft and six narrow-bodied aircraft at a time.
This greenfield Nagpur facility is Boeing's second in the world after Shanghai outside the US and features solar power facility, natural lighting system and a rain water harvesting system.
