The slower rate of aircraft deliveries due to global supply chain constraints is impacting industry’s growth plans, said Air India’s chief executive and managing director Campbell Wilson.
On Tuesday, Wilson, an industry veteran, was speaking at an event organised by Skift, where he cited the situation is expected to persist for another four to five years.
Last year, Wilson had pointed out that the recent strike at Boeing’s manufacturing facilities in the US and supply chain constraints have impacted the deliveries of aircraft and pushed the refurbishment of the legacy widebody aircraft until mid-2027.
While the retrofit of Airbus A320Neo aircraft in a three-class configuration is underway, the refurbishment of widebody Boeing aircraft will only start next year and is expected to be complete by mid-2027.
The airline expects to see most of its expansion in domestic and short-haul international routes in 2025.
Wilson had last year said that the airline will see most of the air traffic growth coming from domestic and short-haul international operations in 2025 as more narrow-body planes are joining the fleet and legacy wide-body aircraft will be going for retrofit next year.
In December 2022, Air India had announced a $400 million plan to fully refurbish its legacy Boeing 777 and 787 aircraft with the latest generation seats and a new in-flight entertainment system.
Air India had ferried 40.45 million passengers during the last fiscal year by operating about 800 daily flights to 55 domestic and 44 international destinations.
Notably, Air India has embarked on a five-year transformation journey that it calls “Vihaan.AI”.
Under this, the airline completed the first two phases called “Taxi” and “Take-off” and entered the final phase—Climb—in 2024.