Air India sold a plane it didn’t know it owned, a 1982 Boeing 737-200 grounded for over a decade

A 1982 Boeing 737-200, grounded since 2012 and omitted from records, resurfaced only after Kolkata airport asked Air India to remove it.

It began with a phone call.

Somewhere at a remote parking bay in Kolkata airport sat a 43-year-old Boeing 737-200, weathered, grounded, and apparently forgotten.

Airport authorities finally reached out to Air India with a simple request: Come remove this aircraft.

The odd part? Air India didn’t know it still owned the plane.

“We didn’t even know we owned it.”

According to PTI, in a note to employees last week, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson admitted the airline had no record, at least in recent operational memory, that the aircraft belonged to it.

“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!” said Campbell Wilson via internal message.

The plane had been decommissioned years earlier for use by India Post, and somewhere between mergers, restructuring and ownership transfers, it disappeared from internal documentation.

A timeline that reads like a travelogue

According to data from planespotters.net as cited by PTI, the aircraft, registered VT-EHH, was delivered in 1982 to Indian Airlines.

After that, it changed hands and roles:

1998: Leased to Alliance Air
2007: Returned to Indian Airlines, converted to a freighter
August 2007: Taken into Air India’s fleet
2012: Grounded permanently
Later: Decommissioned for India Post operations
2022: Air India privatised and acquired by Tata Group

Through mergers and ownership changes, the aircraft outlived both corporate memory and paperwork.

How does a plane vanish from records?

Wilson said the aircraft had been omitted from multiple documents before privatisation, likely because it was offline, not flying commercial routes, and tied to a different operational purpose.

Over time, it faded into organisational blind spots.

Minutes from boardrooms moved on.
Fleets modernised.
Staff retired.
The aircraft stayed where it was.

A symbol of what Tata inherited

Since taking over in 2022, Tata has been reworking legacy contracts, supply chains, vendor systems, records, and fleet assets from the state-run era.

The rediscovered aircraft, Wilson wrote, was just 'another old cobweb from our closet.'

What happened now?

Air India completed the sale and transfer of VT-EHH last week. Details of the buyer and valuation weren’t disclosed.

What we know is that the aircraft has now exited the fleet, officially and administratively.