HYDERABAD: National carrier Air India plans to add 44 Airbus A320 Neo planes to its fleet in the next three years, 68% of which will be net additions to capacity for the first time in more than seven years. Air India will next week introduce financial bids for leasing 15 Airbus A320 Neo planes, said two people aware of the matter. "Three bidders have already responded to the request for proposals that the airline put out recently. It is aiming to get all 15 of the planes between January 2017 and March 2018. The management will consider who is fast with deliveries," said one of the persons cited above, insisting anonymity.

Air India on Wednesday signed an agreement for leasing 14 Airbus A320neo aircraft with ALAFCO, a Kuwait-based leasing company. The delivery of aircraft is likely to start from early next year. The agreement was signed on the inaugural day of India Aviation 2016, the country’s largest aviation conference and exhibition.

Air India CMD Ashwani Lohani and ALAFCO vice chairman and CEO Ahmad Al Zabin signed the agreement.

National carrier Air India (AI) on Tuesday announced its summer schedule in which the airline has expanded its operations in the domestic and international routes and will be effective from March 27. The summer schedule will offer daily return flights from Bengaluru – Trivandrum and Mumbai – Bhopal sector.

Frequency on the Delhi – Pune sector is also being enhanced with number of flights added to and from Pune.

With improvement in its financial health on the back of lower jet fuel prices and increased aircraft utilisation, Air India is planning to expand its operations, both in the international and domestic network.

A senior official of the airline told FE that a direct flight between Washington and New Delhi will start by July, while a new flight to London – Delhi and Ahmedabad is also on the verge of starting operations to utilise the fourth slot at the Heathrow airport.

When the turnaround plan (TAP) of the national carrier Air India was approved by the Union government in 2012, monetisation of its assets was a part of it. Four years later, the airline has managed to monetise a significant number of its assets owned in India and abroad.

According to a senior official of Air India, the national carrier earns revenue worth `85-100 crore from the Air India building situated at Nariman Point, Mumbai. As of now, four floors of the building have been given on rent to SBI and service tax department, seven floors to the income tax department and one floor to Tata Consultancy Services.

Air India plans to bring down its losses by 40 per cent to Rs 2,000 crore in FY17 from the projected Rs 3,529 crore in FY16 on the back of revenue growth and cost optimisation. The airline’s board, led by Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani, has finalised the budget estimates for FY17.

Passenger revenue for FY17 is projected to be around Rs 17,000 crore, up from the estimated Rs 15,500 crore in FY16, due to network expansion and improvement in load factor (capacity use). Air India also plans to add flights to Delhi-Washington and Ahmedabad-London-Newark routes.

Air India plans to expand its US network, including new flights to Newark and Washington and reduce interest burden through refinancing of existing Rs 10,000 crore term loans with government-guarantee backed debentures.

Air India is expected to cut down losses by 40% to Rs 3,529 crore in FY16 from Rs 5,859 crore in the previous year, aided by reduction in jet fuel cost. However, the airline is set to miss its revenue growth target and has been unable to significantly lower its interest and maintenance expenses resulting in the high loss figure.

In a departure from its current practice, state-owned carrier Air India has decided that in the future, it will hire all pilots on contract, thus doing away with the permanent-employee status for them.

Sources said that the airline is set to hire 532 pilots in the future and of these, 200-250 will be recruited in the current year. The practice of hiring pilots on a contractual basis was started last year when Air India recruited 70 pilots who are currently undergoing training. Now, the airline has decided to institutionalise this practice.

In a bid to regain its status as the king of domestic skies and challenge IndiGo’s monopoly, Air India is planning to raise its capacity on domestic routes by using wide-bodied Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes. The carrier plans to use them in its high-capacity routes.

Simultaneously, the airline will fly the A320s between the Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, which experts believe has huge potential due to the government’s stress on regional route expansion.

Mumbai: Air India Express, the low-fare international unit of Air India Ltd, is expecting to post a net profit of Rs.200 crore in 2015-16, airline chief executive officer K. Shyam Sundar said on Wednesday.

The airline posted a net loss of Rs.60 crore in 2014-15.

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