As Air India announced Independence Day discounts of up to 45% on both domestic and international travel on Monday, its pilots body the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), shot off a strongly worded letter to the Chairman and Managing Director pointing that 40% of its Airbus 321 fleet was grounded due to lack of spares.
The letter by ICPA general secretary, Deepankar Gupta said that it is disheartening to know the sorry state of aircraft operated by Air India and the lack of maintenance for want of spares, planning, co-ordination and finance.
Pointing to the A321 fleet, ICPA claimed that only 12 of the 20 aircraft are available for flying. “Forty percent of the A321 fleet is grounded at various stations for lack of spares. The aircraft is the workhorse of the domestic network operating on high-density routes and has the maximum seating capacity,” the letter reads. The ICPA termed this grounding as criminal, especially considering that the high seating capacity is leading to a significant loss of revenue on a daily basis.
“As a consequence of this groundings, the Kozhikode-Dubai and Kozhikode-Sharjah sectors -- the only sectors on the A321 operations to have Extended Duty Time Operations (EDTO) -- do not get aircraft due to routing restrictions, when the company has taken EDTO compliant aircraft on debt. Instead, there is significant loss being made, by irrationally routing non-EDTO aircraft on this route,” ICPA said in its letter.
On the A319 fleet, the ICPA general secretary said that the situation was only slightly better. “Four of the 22, A319 aircraft are. This makes 18% of the fleet unavailable for operation. Similarly, on the long-haul routes, the Boeing 777 fleet situation is as desperate.
Of the 14, B777-300 aircraft, 5 are in the hangar,” the pilot body claimed.
