MD & CEO, Air India Campbell Wilson speaks during the Ground Breaking Ceremony of Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) by Air India Group at Bangalore International Airport Limited, Devanahalli, in Bengaluru, on Wednesday.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Air India Group’s new mega MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) facility in Bengaluru will be ready and operational by early CY26, Air India, CEO & MD, Campbell Wilson said.
The MRO facility, to be built at an investment of ₹1,400 crore, would hire 1,200 people, he said while addressing the media here on Wednesday.
MROs usually hire diverse skill sets including avionics systems engineers, testing professionals, technicians, digital trouble-shooters, additive manufacturing experts, professionals with soft skills and also specialists, mechanics and techies with industry-specific expertise.
The upcoming MRO facility, being built on a 35-acre land parcel at the Bengaluru International Airport would become an important hub for Air India Group airlines’ aircraft maintenance operations in the region, especially when the group was transforming to modernise its fleet and expand its domestic and global connectivity, the company said.
Earlier in the day at a ground breaking ceremony for the MRO, Mr. Wilson said, “India’s aviation sector is on a growth trajectory and Air India is playing a leading role in this.’‘
When asked about the status of Air India’s transformation exercise, he said, ‘‘We will, and as we’ve previously said, refit all of the legacy aircraft. The narrow-body refit is well underway and we should have essentially all of the narrow-body aircraft, about 87% of the fleet, completed by June next year.’‘
On the wide-body fleet, he said, Air India was entirely dependent on the supply chain of business and first-class seats, which is a disrupted market at the moment. ‘‘All airlines are facing the challenge of getting access to these improved seats. We will start the retrofit programme [for wide body] next year, but we’re a little bit at the mercy of the seat deliveries,’‘ he added.
According to Mr. Wilson, while the retrofit of wide-body aircraft will not commence until next year, almost a third of Air India’s wide-body fleet is relatively new.
On inflight entertainment he said, passengers could now stream more than 2,000 hours of entertainment to their own device. It was now available on all wide-body aircraft and would progressively be rolled out to all narrow-body aircraft in the next couple of months.
All older aircraft have upgraded entertainment systems, he insisted. ‘‘Every flight from Delhi to Heathrow, every flight from Mumbai to Heathrow, every flight from Delhi to New York, Mumbai to New York, and progressively other cities will be operated by our most modern aircraft,” Mr. Wilson said.
On the group’s consolidation and merger with Vistara, he said, the four airlines in the group were all operating with different processes. ‘‘Therefore, we have different manuals including regulatory manuals. We’ve spent 18 months harmonising all of those processes and to put all of the airlines onto a common operating set of procedures,’‘ Mr. Wilson added.
Published – September 04, 2024 09:20 pm IST
