Dealing with airspace issue on rolling basis: Air India CEO

Hindustan Times

2 days ago

As India eyes a more prominent role in global aviation, Air India is positioning itself at the centre of that ambition. From a modernised fleet and increased international connectivity to a sharp focus on international transit traffic—the airline is rebuilding itself as a competitive global player. The airline's CEO Campbell Wilson shares his insights in an interview. Edited excerpts:
With the Pakistan airspace closure resulting in losses for you, how are you dealing with the situation?
Yes, we are discussing (the issue) with the government, whether they help (us financially) or not is their prerogative. One school of thought is that you say well, we don't know how long this is going to last, so let's just make a call for the rest of the year and effect some changes. But then it's very hard to wind that back if the situation improves. So, you then inconvenience customers with different routings. You've planned your crew a certain way. The other approach is to take it more on a rolling basis and say every few weeks we'll assess the situation and take a call. And so, for the moment, we're doing the latter. And we'll plan through to the end of August, and then in a couple of weeks' time we'll look and see whether that should continue.
How do you see Air India's transformation contributing to India's goal of becoming a global aviation hub?
The growth that we have undertaken over the past few years, we've gone from less than 100 operating aircraft as Air India-Air Express to more than 300. The investments we're making in more aircraft, 570 in the order book, and in supporting ecosystems like flight training schools, etc are contributing. We are adding much more international connectivity and have increased the number of international destinations by 25%, which is just the beginning, given the number of aircraft that we have yet to come. We've increased the cargo tonnage by three times, given people nonstop opportunity to fly to and from India to cities that previously weren't available nonstop before, and we're scheduling our flights such that people can connect through India much more conveniently than was the case in the past.
While Airbus 350s are new in your fleet, what is the update on the upgrade of the older fleet?
More than half of our total fleet -- both narrowbody and wide aircraft -- are either refurbished or new. So half a million people a week travel on an upgraded fleet. On the narrowbody side for the full service airline, we're about two-thirds of the way through the upgrade and we'll complete the rest of it mostly by the end of the calendar year. For the widebody fleet, about 35% of those aircraft are new A350s or aircraft that have modernised interiors. The balance aircraft are going to be upgraded over the course of the next two years. The B777s, too, have already undergone an initial refresh ahead of a full retrofit, which starts next year. In the B787s, the first aircraft goes into retrofit in July, and the rest of the 27 legacy aircraft will be upgraded over the next couple of years. So by FY2028 we should complete the upgradation and harmonisation of the fleet to modern standards.
What kind of upgrades in aviation infrastructure do you think India requires, looking at the travel demand?
The airport operators and the number of airports is obviously increasing. The investment being made in Navi Mumbai, in Jewar , the new terminal in Bengaluru, the future plans that exist for the Indira Gandhi International... I think investment is being made in airports. Where I have a little bit of concern is air navigation. The sheer number of new aircraft that's going to be entering India's skies is something that clearly needs to be managed well.
Connecting people through India (passengers flying from one country to another through India) or I2I will play a big role in making India an aviation hub. How much progress have you made on that front?
Well, the volume of I2I passengers that we carry has gone up by four times since privatisation. And it's now nearly a double-digit percentage of our international traffic. And it's come from product upgradation and becoming a more credible player and internationalised and also schedule redesign. Previously, for example, our flights coming in from Europe didn't connect to flights going to Australia. And so, why would someone choose to spend 12, 18 hours at the airport? So, by rescheduling the flights such that there's only a couple of hours transit time, you become a much more credible proposition.