AI Express fleet expansion flies high as Air India offers 20 planes to plug Boeing delays

Aloke Singh CEO- Air India Express

Although Boeing has slowed down on the delivery of aircraft, the fleet expansion drive of Air India Express keeps flying high on planes from parent Air India, Alok Singh, the chief executive of the Tatas-run low-cost carrier, told Moneycontrol.

"As part of our fleet expansion, we will receive planes from Air India as there has been a slowdown in the deliveries of our Boeing aircraft," Singh said.

Air India will hand over 20 Airbus A 320 planes to AI Express and two of these have already arrived with the LCC. The budget carrier airline plans to expand its fleet to 110 aircraft by the end of this fiscal year, adding 20 more planes following its merger with AIX Connect. As of now, the fleet size of Air India Express stands at 90.

Boeing Co has run into a turmoil with more than 33,000 factory workers going on strike in the US since the past seven weeks. While the workers are likely to return to work this week after being voted by a slim margin to accept Boeing’s third contract offer, the Seattle factory strike has crippled production and has triggered delays to 737 Max deliveries across Asia.

The US-based aircraft manufacturer is due to hand over 981 Max jets to carriers in Asia, led by Air India and Indonesia’s Lion Air, by 2030, according to data from Cirium. That’s close to one-third of all scheduled deliveries of the aircraft worldwide over that period.

While Singh did not give a timeline on when the deliveries from Boeing will restart, he did say that Air India Express' fleet and network expansion will not be hit by a slowdown in Boeing aircraft delivery.

Air India Express is also optimising its network as part of the Air India group with a strategy to connect passengers from smaller cities and towns with metro cities and will also focus on international routes. "Nearly 60 percent of India's domestic air traffic comes from connecting Tier-II and III cities to metro cities and Air India Express will focus on optimising its network to tap into this market," Singh said.

The airline also aims to fly to a total of 55 destinations by the end of March 2025. Apart from adding domestic routes, the Tata Group-owned airline will start flights to more foreign destinations, including Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand. Singh also stressed that the airline's network strategy is also deeply woven into the group network strategy.

"As part of our network strategy as a group, Air India will focus on servicing more premium customers which primarily travel on the metro routes domestically, while Air India Express will focus more on providing options to connect smaller markets to metro cities," Singh said.

Air India Express plans flights to Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh, while Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Cambodia are on its expansion blueprint for South East Asia. According to Air India Express Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) Ankur Garg, the airline will also look at destinations like Hong Kong and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, would be on its radar in the future.

Air India Express aims to grow its passenger traffic by over 50 percent in 2024-25 over the last year on the back of new routes, larger fleet size, and operations to new destinations. Accordingly, the airline plans to ferry 2.4 million passengers per month by the end of FY25 from 1.6 million passengers it transported per month by the end of 2023-24.

Air India Express now has over 400 daily flights, connecting 35 domestic and 14 international airports, with a fleet of 90 aircraft, comprising 61 Boeing 737s and 29 Airbus A320s. The airline has nearly 1,800 pilots on its roster.

Air India Express will also start re-configuring its aircraft from April 2025, removing the business class seats to operate as an economy-only airline. According to Singh, this transition is in line with the carrier’s strategy to focus on efficient operations of narrow-body aircraft, specifically aimed at catering to budget-conscious travellers.

The airline, which merged with AIX Connect (previously, AirAsia India) on October 1, currently runs 30 planes that have dual-class configuration.

In February 2023, Air India had placed orders for 470 planes, comprising 250 from Airbus and 220 from Boeing. Out of the 470, 400 are narrow-body aircraft. As supply chain disruptions affected the delivery of new aircraft, Air India Express took deliveries of 35 white-tail Boeing 737-8 planes as part of the order and plans to raise this number to 50 in the near future. The white-tail aircraft are those originally manufactured for a different airline and later acquired by another. Many of these white-tail aircraft have varying numbers of business-class seats.

Air India and Air India Express are weighing options to integrate their loyalty programmes to offer customers travelling on Air India Express flights the chance to add points on Air India's loyalty programme Flying Returns, officials said.

"At the moment, flights operated under codeshare with Air India, customers are offered points, but going forward, we are considering ways to provide customers loyalty points for flying standalone Air India Express points as well," Garg said.