Air India’s Fleet Transformation: Upgraded Cabins for Enhanced Customer Experience | Mumbai News

MUMBAI: Air India’s ongoing transformation from a government airline to a Tata Group carrier will increasingly become discernable from the second half of this year in the form of retrofitted narrow-body aircraft—the single-aisle fleet that flies about 80% of its passengers. In the last three years since its privatisation in January 2022, Air India has often been flogged on social media by passengers for issues that included a poor product offering. That aspect of the Air India experience might finally change this year with the upgraded cabin of its narrow-body fleet, which makes up two-thirds of Air India’s total capacity, set to lead the change.
“The first mandate from the Air India board is to ensure customer experience improves and for Air India to be a customer-centric organisation,” said Nipun Aggarwal, Air India Chief Commercial Officer, in a recent interaction with the media.
How does that unfold? .”Of the 63 million customers we serve, most fly domestic or short-haul flights, operated by narrow-body aircraft that account for two-third our capacity, with the rest being wide-bodied aircraft (that operate on routes to Europe, the US, and Australia),” he said. “Air India’s entire narrow-body capacity, which serves almost 80% of those 63 million customers, will see a new retrofitted (cabin upgrade) and modern product. This means almost 80 to 85% of our customers who fly on Air India will see a good product in place by the second half of this year, which would be a major change for us,” he added.
Air India has a total of 120 narrow-body aircraft, out of which 70 are from Vistara and are in good condition. Out of the 50 Air India aircraft, 40 will be retrofitted by June this year, and another ten will be done in the remaining 12 months, said Aggarwal. “These 10 are the A320ceos; we were not planning to retain them earlier, but now with supply chain issues, we have decided to retrofit them,” he said.
The retrofitted aircraft “is a magnificent product and is being highly appreciated in the market.” The retrofitted aircraft are being deployed on the metro to non-metro market. “Because in the metro to metro market, we decided to ring-fence with the Vistara product. Till the time the entire Air India fleet was retrofitted and modernised, we thought we would ring-fence at least the more corporate and more premium routes with the Vistara products. But gradually, as the Air India product gets implemented and all the aircraft get retrofitted, they will also start getting deployed on some of these prime routes,” he said.
“When we bought Air India, one of the key pillars of turning around Air India and transforming Air India was fleet modernisation, restoration, and growth. Without a modern fleet and a big fleet order, which allows you to plan 20 years ahead, you cannot build a strong, modern airline,” said Aggarwal. “So one of the first things that we did immediately after taking over was announce a retrofit of all the existing aircraft. We announced the aircraft order, and we also went into the market very aggressively and started scouting for capacity which we could lease from lessors,” he said. The Tata Group leased almost 25 narrow-body aircraft and 11 wide-body aircraft and got some 50 deliveries from Boeing as part of the big 600-aircraft order it placed last year. “So a lot of new capacity started coming in and joining the fleet,” he said.
As far as the wide-body aircraft go, 40 are set to be retrofitted, and the exercise will begin this year with the first Boeing 787-900 expected to be rolled out in the later part of the year. “Here we have had some setbacks because of the supply chain issues and the challenges that seat manufacturers are facing globally. This should have started last year, but this was delayed to this year. But now hopefully this is on track, and once these aircraft start coming in, then I think we should see a significant improvement in customer experience in the months to come. And the Boeing 777 fleet will undergo the same process starting next year,” he added.