A-I May Drop Plan To Up Fleet For Haj

Air-India (A-I), which is left with a surplus fleet following the recent downsizing of operations, is likely to drop plans to acquire additional aircraft on dry lease for the Haj operations in 2002. Instead, the airline is likely to press the Boeing 747-200s in its fleet into service, in line with the suggestions of the Union civil aviation minister, Syed Shahnawaz Hussain.

Air-India, as a result, is expected to ferry much less passengers this year over previous years.

Earlier this year, Air-India had ferried about 51,000 of the 71,000 pilgrims who visited Saudi Arabia during Ramzan, using six dry leased Lockheed L1011 aircraft.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabian Airlines, the national carrier of Saudi Arabia is expected to scale up its operations, by carrying about 31,000 passengers this year, senior A-I officials said. The airline had carried around 20,000 passengers last year.

Air-India will operate flights from five destinations for the Haj operations in 2002 -- Kozhikode, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore and Chennai.

The airliner has already issued advertisements in international publications inviting tenders for acquiring aircraft for short-term lease, prior to the civil aviation minister's proposal.

Also, the airline is planning to discontinue one of its four weekly operations to Japan shortly, in view of the abysmal passenger load factors on the sector. Air-India has already discontinued five flights so far -- two to the US, two to Singapore and the London terminator service -- thus leading to a surplus capacity for the national carrier.

The proposal to drop plans to acquire additional aircraft is part of the airline's massive cost cutting exercise, undertaken after disaster struck the global aviation industry following the September 11 attacks on the US. The civil aviation minister, however, today claimed that Air-India's load factors have dropped by just 5-6 per cent, against the 20-30 per cent decline of other global airlines.