Forced to ground over a dozen of its airplanes for want of spares, debt-laden Air India may be needing Rs 1,200 crore to put them back in the skies.

An airline executive said the engineering department has asked the management to make the funds available in a few days, failing which there could be serious impact on flight schedules. “The funds should be arranged in the next few days. The management has in fact been trying to make more aircraft available for operations,” he said.

Official sources said the airline would currently be operating only 52-53 Airbus family aircraft out of a total fleet of 66. Further, almost five B777 are on the ground. Of the total 27 B787 Dream liner, three are learnt to have been grounded, taking the total grounded aircraft to 19.
The airline’s pilot body Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) had last week flagged the issue of grounding of aircraft and its impact on flight schedules.

“Almost 23 per cent of the Air India fleet is grounded for lack of spares. To put this into perspective, aircraft worth approximately $3.6 billion or approximately Rs 25,000 crore (at today’s list price) are lying idle in the hangars,” the ICPA had alleged in a letter to the airline chairman and managing director Pradeep Singh Kharola.