Air India has admitted that it lost track of a Boeing 737 for 13 years – until it turned up last month in a remote parking bay at an airport.
The Boeing 737-200 cargo plane was parked at Kolkata airport in 2012 when it was decommissioned, but then disappeared from the airline’s records.
In the years since, the airport authorities have continued to levy parking fees for the plane and issued invoices to Air India.
But the airline disputed those invoices on the basis that it had no record of the plane registered as VT-EHH being parked there.
That position changed only when Kolkata airport issued a formal request for Air India to remove the aircraft. The airline’s chief executive, Campbell Wilson, acknowledged the oversight in an internal message to staff that has since been widely reported.
“Though disposal of an old aircraft is not unusual, this one is – for it’s an aircraft that we didn’t even know we owned until recently!” Mr Wilson said.
“Over time, it was lost from memory and only came to light when our friends at Kolkata airport informed us of its presence in a (very) remote parking bay and asked us to remove it! After verifying that it was indeed ours, we’ve now done so – and in so doing removed another old cobweb from our closet.”
Air India has said the aircraft slipped off its books amid successive restructurings. It began its life with Indian Airlines and was absorbed into Air India after the two carriers merged in 2007. The jet was later adapted for freight use and leased to India Post before being withdrawn from service.
Mr Wilson has said the plane was “repeatedly left out of internal records”, including during the airline’s privatisation in 2022, meaning it never appeared on key transfer documents, reported the Tribune India. Assets missing from takeover inventories can easily be forgotten, particularly once they have stopped flying.
Aviation analysts say airlines are usually vigilant about avoiding such situations, as grounded aircraft represent cost rather than value.
“Given the regulatory oversight, it’s hard to imagine an airline genuinely losing track of an aircraft,” John Strickland, founder of JLS Consulting, told The Telegraph, another Indian newspaper. “Maintenance histories and component serial numbers are normally very tightly controlled.”
The Boeing 737-200 is a first-generation version of the model introduced in the late 1960s and has long been retired from passenger service. Industry estimates suggest the aircraft itself has negligible resale value, though some components, including its Pratt & Whitney engines, could still be reused. This was the only retired Air India aircraft sold with its engines still intact.
Kolkata airport ultimately recovered close to Rs10m (£83,362) in accumulated parking fees, with Air India confirming that it had agreed to pay its dues. The plane was removed on 14 November and transported by road to Bengaluru, where it will be repurposed for ground-based engineering training. The space it occupied will be used for one of two new hangars planned at the airport.
Airport officials say VT-EHH was the 14th defunct aircraft cleared from Kolkata airport in the past five years, pointing to wider enforcement gaps around abandoned planes and unresolved ownership disputes.
