Air India to deploy additional cabin crew on narrow body planes: CEO

An official from Air India clarified that narrowbody planes require more cabin crew members to deliver premium service

Air India will deploy additional cabin crew members on its narrow body aircraft, which are operating on international routes and domestic metro-to-metro routes, to provide better service to passengers, its Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Campbell Wilson said on Friday.

"On the cabin crew front, our recruitment and training teams have done a great job in recent months of onboarding new colleagues. Thanks to their efforts, and notwithstanding our ongoing growth, we'll be restoring a full service-based complement of cabin crew on our narrowbody international and domestic metro-to-metro flights from September 1," he told employees in a message that has been reviewed by Business Standard.

Air India has 127 planes in its fleet, out of which 74 are narrowbody aircraft, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. 

A narrowbody plane like A320neo has a smaller fuel tank as compared to widebody aircraft. They are used domestically or on short international routes. 

"As even more new crew enter the system we will be restoring the full service-based complement on all other flights too, subject to load factors," Wilson added.