Air India starts building Bengaluru facility with Rs 1,400 cr initial investment

Bengaluru: Air India, on Wednesday, announced the starting of construction of the planned  Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility, in Bengaluru with an initial investment of Rs 1,400 crore, which is expected to create around 1,200 direct jobs.

"Economic modeling indicates that for every job that is created at the airport, it has a multiplier effect of seven times, so the 1,200 jobs at the airport stands to create seven times that number," said Campbell Wilson, chief executive officer and managing director, Air India.

Speaking to reporters, Campbell said that the airline is acquiring 500 aircraft, up from 470 announced earlier.

When asked about the modernisation of the fleet that the Tatas inherited when they took over the airline from the union government, he admitted that there are ‘challenges’ as the legacy aircraft have not undergone a modern maintenance programme.

"To the extent that we can mitigate the shortfall of the legacy product, we are doing so. We will, as we've previously said, refit all of the legacy aircraft. The narrow-body refit is well underway, and we should have essentially all of the narrow-body aircraft, about 87% of them, complete by June next year. 30% of Air India's wide-body fleet is already upgraded and for the rest we will begin by next year," he said.

The planned MRO facility in Bengaluru, will have 12 hangar bays and will be able to accommodate narrow-body as well as wide-body aircraft. This facility, expansion of in-house line maintenance in facilities across the network, and the recently refurbished wide body aircraft hangar in Mumbai, will make Air India more self-reliant in the maintenance of its entire fleet from 2025.

Earlier this year, Air India  and Tata Advanced Systems Limited signed an agreement with the Karnataka government to invest Rs 2,300 crore in the state’s aerospace and defence sectors.