Tata-owned Air India on Monday launched the commercial operations of its first wide-body A350 aircraft, with a flight taking off for Chennai from the Mumbai airport. The 316-seater A350-900 aircraft has a three-class cabin configuration with 28 private business suites with full-flat beds, 24 premium economy and 264 economy seats.
"Air India flight AI-589 took off from Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport on Monday for Chennai, with a full-capacity load of passengers," the airline said in a statement. The aircraft will initially fly on domestic routes, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai, for crew familiarisation and regulatory compliance.
It will later be deployed for long-haul flights to destinations across continents, strengthening Air India's growing wide-body fleet, comprising its own and recently leased aircraft, the airline said.
Flight AI 589, which departed on time from Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport, carried a nearly full complement of passengers eager to experience the revamped Air India.
The first of Air India's own 20 Airbus A350-900 aircraft, registered VT-JRA, arrived at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport late last month from Airbus' Toulouse manufacturing facility in France.
The induction of the A350 in Air India's fleet is a part of the airline's 470 new aircraft order that it placed early last year. Air India will buy 40 A350s, 20 each of the A350-900 and A350-1000 models, as part of its revised 250-plane deal with Airbus, along with 140 narrow-body A321neo and 70 A320neo jets.
Recently, Akasa Air gave order of 150 Boeing 737 MAX narrowbody aircraft to expand its reach in domestic and international operations. The company announced this during the 'Wings India' event in Hyderabad.
Meanwhile, Darren Hulst, Boeing’s vice-president (VP) of commercial marketing, said that India will need more than 2,500 new aircraft deliveries by 2042. India will need more than 92 per cent of 2,705 or over 2,500 aircraft by 2042. These numbers are based on the forecast given in the middle of the last year, he added. "We project that carriers here (South Asia including India) will need more than 2,700 aircraft deliveries by the year 2042," Hulst said; adding a similar composition of the fleet with more than 2,300 single aisles, nearly 400 wide-body aircraft for the long haul would be needed..