Air India’s Dreamliner takes to the skies again

NEW DELHI: Air India on Wednesday resumed flights of its Dreamliner jets four months after global regulators grounded the Boeing planes following technical glitches in the passenger aircraft.
All 50 Dreamliners operating globally were grounded in January after a fire aboard a parked Japan Airlines 787 in January and a smoking battery that forced the emergency landing of an All Nippon Airways 787 the same month.
The US Federal Aviation Administration approved Boeing’s new battery system design in April which allowed airlines around the world to begin modifying the Dreamliner planes.
“We treat the Dreamliners as a game-changer for us as this aircraft will improve our revenues over the years,” debt-laden Air India chairman Rohit Nandan told a news conference in New Delhi.
Air India is betting big on the Dreamliner to take on the competition in the country’s fiercely competitive airline market where nimbler private sector rivals with newer planes have badly eroded its market share.
The resumption of Dreamliner flights by Air India came a day after India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation gave the green light to resume operation of the planes.
Nandan added that the carrier will replace its eight older Boeing B-777s with wide-bodied Dreamliners.
Airline officials said the carrier aims to make the Dreamliners its workhorse in coming years.
“We will either sell or lease them... We are already in discussion with Boeing to help us in this matter,” Nandan said, declining to give details.
“We resumed service with two flights today and we will start flying Dreamliners to London on May 22 which will be followed by flights to Frankfurt and Paris,” said G.P. Rao, a spokesman for the national carrier.
“Both the flights were overbooked,” Rao told AFP.
Chicago-based Boeing has insisted its Dreamliners are safe.
“We are confident that the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity,” Boeing’s senior vice president Dinesh Keskar said at the joint press conference with Nandan.
Air India bought 27 Dreamliners as part of a multi-billion-dollar deal in 2005. It received the first plane last September and now has six, with the remaining 21 due to arrive by 2016.
Air India chairman Nandan announced at the news conference that Boeing will deliver the seventh plane later in the month.
The Indian Dreamliners were initially due for delivery between 2008 and 2011 but a row over demands by Air India for compensation for the delay held up delivery.
Air India’s once-commanding market share shrank to 18 percent last year in the face of fierce competition from private carriers that have taken to the air since India liberalized its aviation sector in the 1990s.
The Indian government in April 2012 cleared a $5.75 billion bailout package to help the carrier, which has accumulated debts of $8.3 billion, but warned the airline that it would have to fend for itself in the future.