Mumbai: India’s oldest airline Air India Ltd will take 15 more narrow body Airbus SAS made A320 planes on lease to augment capacity as its private rivals are taking delivery of more planes scaling up the competition.

This in addition to Air India’s latest addition of five such planes and its plan to lease 14 Airbus A320neos, a fuel efficient variant that can give 15% savings on fuel compared to existing A320 planes.

NEW DELHI: Air India has for the first time approached states directly with an offer to provide connectivity to these regions with smaller aircraft available with its subsidiary Alliance Air, a move it hopes will fetch higher revenues.

Air India CMD Ashwini Lohani has written to all state governments offering Alliance Air aircraft for providing regional connectivity under the viability gap funding model.

NEW DELHI: A serious miscommunication between IGI airport's air traffic control (ATC) tower and Air India pilots on Tuesday morning saw some tense moments and led to a close shave for two aircrafts. An incoming flight was asked to go around after the safety distance area of the runway it was to land on was breached by another plane waiting to take off.

Around 10.15am, an IndiGo Airbus A-320 was on its final approach to Delhi. At the same time, an Air India Boeing-777 was taxiing to the runway to operate a special Haj flight to Srinagar.

State-owned carrier Air India has put on sale nine of its 21 Dreamliners (B787-800) to raise over Rs 7,000 crore to fund acquisition of new aircraft and also for repayment of the bridge loan availed earlier for purchasing these Boeing 787-800s.

These nine planes were inducted in the carrier's fleet between March 2014 and June this year.

NEW DELHI: An Air India aircraft flying from Chennai to Singapore on Monday suffered an engine shutdown just as it was approaching its destination. The twin-engine plane landed safely on one engine and is now grounded there.

"The pilot got an indication of low oil pressure in one of the aircraft's GE engines. To avoid damaging the engine by running it dry, which could lead to seizure, the pilot switched it off and landed in Singapore on one engine," said a source.

NEW DELHI: Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in the US, Air India on Sunday announced it was starting the only non-stop link with America's west coast with a flight between Delhi and San Francisco from December 2.

"San Francisco will become Air India's fourth destination in the United States. Air India operates daily non-stop flights to New York (JFK), Newark (EWR) and Chicago (ORD)," a statement said. The service is looking to cater to the large Indian community in Silicon Valley, where Modi paid a visit.

An Air India Boeing 787 plane on the Delhi-Hong Kong route made an emergency landing in Kolkata in early hours of Tuesday after passengers complained of smoke inside the aircraft cabin.

The Boeing 787 is the latest aircraft in Air India’s fleet but in recent weeks its serviceability has been impacted due to snags.

Air India on September 20 announced it has set up a dedicated monitoring team under an executive director which would conduct surprise checks to ensure safe travel and better service delivery to its passengers.

"Senior executives will undertake surprise checks to monitor and supervise the safety and cleanliness inside and outside the aircraft. They will ensure increased servicing of equipment onboard the aircraft," the national carrier said in a release.

India’s national carrier Air India, the brand that today encompasses both the erstwhile Indian Airlines and Air India, has posted a loss (Rs 5,547 crore) for the eighth successive year since its merger in March 2007.

The accumulated loss is now more than Rs 44,000 crore ($7.3 billion)–equal to India’s annual health budget–and borrowing has grown to more than Rs 38,000 crore ($6.3 billion), according to data compiled by IndiaSpend from the Department of Public Enterprises.

Air India pilots have voted in favour of a strike to protest the management's notification stripping commanders of "workman" status.

However, the pilots are yet to issue a strike notice.

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