UNI

Tiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu), Mar 26: Air India plans to mop-up substantial capital by selling six of its A310-300 aircraft to a United Kingdom-based aircraft funding bank, the INVESTEC and again take them back on lease, Air India Ground Services Executive Director S Ranganathan has said.

Talking to newspersons here, Ranganathan said discussions were on with the bank authorities, who had shown interest to purchase the six aircrafts for 80 million dollars and lease them back to Air India for a rental of 2.47 lakh dollars per month.

The lease period would be about 60 months if the negotiations are successful and as of now the cost of aircraft in the books of Air India is almost nil due to depreciation, he added.

He said Air India would include new destinations to its network and as soon as the airlines strengthens its fleet, new destinations across the globe would be included to its already crowded network.

The company had placed orders to acquire 68 aircraft, of which 50 were meant for Air India and the remaining 18 for Air India Express.

Out of the 50 aircraft, 23 aircrafts would be 777 LR wide-bodied flying machines capable of flying for 16 hours non-stop and remaining 27 would be the latest version Boeing 787.

Before the end of the next fiscal, 17 aircraft would be commissioned and by 2010 the remaining. Hopefully, by 2008 Air India would be able to include four new destinations in the US. The new destinations would be San Francisco, Houston, Dallas and Washington DC, besides the three cities already covered by Air India, namely New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, he said.

Air India would revive the services to Sydney, Mauritius, Durban and Johannesburg as soon as the fleet strength is enhanced, he said.

The company plans to set up a pilot training centre in Mumbai exclusively for Air India and Indian.

On the financial status, the budget airlines Air India Express was able to clinch no profit, no loss situation in the year 2005-06 and in the current fiscal, the airlines would close with a nominal profit.

The company plans to convert two aircraft to freighters, out of which maximum economic value could be derived out. As of now, the budget airliner division was holding a fleet of 13 aircraft (737-800), out of which six were their own and the remaining seven operated under a lease agreement, he added.