Air India Express expands fleet to 100 planes; aims to operate 500 daily flights by March-end

In a release on Monday, the airline said it will be operating over 500 daily flights by the end of this month across a fast-expanding network of 54 destinations across India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Air India Express now has 100 planes in its fleet by inducting another Boeing 737-8 aircraft, which operated its first flight on Bengaluru-Hindon route.

In a release on Monday, the airline said it will be operating over 500 daily flights by the end of this month across a fast-expanding network of 54 destinations across India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.From a fleet of 26 Boeing 737 NGs and 28 A320 aircraft in January 2022, when the airline was taken over by the Tata Group, the carrier’s has almost doubled its fleet to 100 aircraft, according to the release.

The 100th aircraft, featuring ’Chittara’ tail art inspired by Karnataka’s traditional mural painting, was flagged off by the airline’s Managing Director Aloke Singh at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport.”In just over three years since privatisation, we integrated and merged the LCC (low cost carrier) airlines, while scaling up rapidly with a modern and fuel-efficient fleet, broad basing our domestic network, deepening and expanding our Middle East and Southeast Asia routes.

"Today, we have a formidable presence in the India market focused towards tier 2 and tier 3 cities, the emerging hotspots of the economy, playing a pivotal role in the next stage of India’s aviation growth story,” Singh said.Air India Express and AIX Connect (formerly AirAsia India) were integrated last year.