State-owned airline Air India will get only Rs 80 crore as additional budget support in the current financial year from the government – way below its demand of Rs 2,200 crore.

This is despite the fact Air India’s chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani had written to the government that lack of funds might derail the turnaround process of the airline. “The finance ministry accepted the civil aviation ministry’s argument that additional fund was necessary for the airline but expressed its inability to accept the full demand,” said a senior civil aviation ministry official.

New Delhi: Flag carrier Air India Ltd will deploy its double-decker four-engine jumbo jet Boeing 747 on domestic flights between Delhi-Mumbai to beat airport congestion.

The airline mostly flies its twin-engine narrow body Airbus A320 plane on this route currently, typically offering 140 seats inclusive of 20 business class seats.

A total of 21,678 passengers availed the last minute ticket sale scheme, which was launched by the national carrier Air India in early July this year under which it offered fares equivalent to AC second class of Rajdhani Express, Parliament was informed.

The Government-run airline had on July 9 launched the offer for a limited period, saying that the move was aimed at not only making last-minute bookings more affordable but also to fill up vacant seats.

Air India will get less than half of the equity support it wanted from the government this fiscal. Against the demand of Rs 3,900 crore, the state-owned airline will get only Rs 1,713 crore in FY17, official sources told FE. The capital infusion is part of the Rs 30,000-crore bailout package for Air India in the form of equity support by the government. So far, Rs 23,933 crore has been released to the company in several tranches.

Air India is all set to take delivery of its first more fuel-efficient A320 neo aircraft in January next year.

As it works on ways to turn around its fortunes, the airline is looking to ramp up the fleet with more fuel-efficient A320 neo (new engine option) planes.

The Narendra Modi-led central government has on several occasions chest-thumped about having changed the fortunes of Air India and Air India Express. Only recently it announced that Air India had made a profit after long. However, it turns out, some part of this profit would have been made by charging senior citizens booking tickets online as much as three times the normal adult airfare across sectors in India.

Thousands of people above the age of 60 years – pensioners, retired people, armed forces personnel and others – use Air India every month. The government-run airline seems to have charged these people at much higher rates than usual, even as they are entitled to concessionary airfare.

State-owned Air India, which reported an operating profit of Rs 105 crore during FY16, in what was seen as early signs of a turnaround, also managed to increase its revenue per regular employee by over 12% to Rs 1.09 crore in the year. This was achieved by reducing the number of regular employees to 19,401, down 8% compared with FY15.

Air India, which received a bailout package of Rs 30,000 crore by the government in 2012, had frozen hiring of regular employees in 2012 and has since hired pilots and cabin crew on contract. This improved the airline-to-employee ratio to 1:120 (excluding subsidiaries) compared with 1:139 in the earlier fiscal.

Flag carrier Air India is mulling leasing ten Dornier aircraft from Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd to boost its regional operations as the government looks to make flying more affordable under the ambitious UDAN scheme.

State-owned HAL is already making the Dornier 228 planes under licence from Swiss technology company RUAG for the defence forces and European markets.

An Air India plane, carrying 108 passengers and crew members onboard, on Sunday made an emergency landing at the Indira Gandhi International airport in the national capital after its tyre burst while taking off from Udaipur.

The aircraft (Airbus 319 operating as flight no AI-472) took off around 7:20 PM from Udaipur's Maharana Pratap international Airport and just before it took to the skies, a loud bang was heard, officials said.

An Air India plane carrying 128 passengers and crew members from Ahmedabad suffered a tyre burst while landing at the city airport this morning.

All passengers are safe and another aircraft has been arranged to ferry passengers to their onward journey, an Air India spokesperson in New Delhi said.

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