Calcutta airport has finally bid goodbye to an unwanted guest, a hulking Boeing B737-200 that its owner Air India had forgotten for 13 years.
Sources said the airline only recently realised that one of its aircraft had been lying abandoned in Calcutta since 2012 and decided to sell it.
They said the 43-year-old aircraft was sold through an agent and, the week before last, ferried by road to Bengaluru where it will be used for the ground training of air crew.
Air India paid more than ₹1 crore to Calcutta airport as cumulative “charges” for the Boeing’s 13-year stay, officials said.
They added that two more “unclaimed” aircraft — ATR-72s belonging to Alliance Air — had been lying at Calcutta airport for the past five years or so.
The Boeing — converted into a cargo plane in 2007 and deregistered in 2013 — was first kept in a hangar at Calcutta airport. Eventually, it was parked on a patch of earth beside the tarmac at the airport’s southeastern corner, without a roof over its head.
Campbell Wilson, Air India CEO and managing director, wrote an internal message about the aircraft on November 21.
“Dear colleagues, last week, we completed the sale and transfer of a B737-200 aircraft (VT-EHH), which had been grounded since 2012. 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!” Wilson wrote.
“It transpires that, many years before privatisation, this aircraft had been decommissioned in order to operate for India Post and was omitted from many documents.
“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, Wilson said, has so far disposed of 39 obsolete aircraft and associated engines across multiple fleets (B747, A319, A321, B737). The last one to go was a B744, long parked in Mumbai.
“One flew off last year, two have already been deconstructed onsite, and the final one will start being disassembled soon,” Wilson wrote.
“It is always sad to see aircraft go, and the B747s especially so, but they have served Air India well and must make way for newer technology. (Underscoring this point, just as the last B744 disappears in late December, our first linefit B787-9 will arrive in India to carry on its proud legacy!)
“A big thank you to everyone in Engineering, Finance, Commercial and others for driving this to completion.”
Sources said the Boeing had been delivered to the erstwhile Indian Airlines in September 1982 and later leased by Alliance Air in February 1998.
It was returned to Indian Airlines as a freighter in July 2007. In August 2007, the aircraft came into Air India’s possession when Indian Airlines was merged with it, the sources added.
“The directorate-general of civil aviation deregistered the aircraft in 2013. We wrote several letters to Air India to take the aircraft away. Recently, Air India got in touch with us,” a senior official at Calcutta airport said.
The Tata Group acquired Air India in January 2022. Calcutta airport officials said that during the period the airline was owned by the government, its management had simply ignored their letters.
“Now we have to deal with the two ATR aircraft,” an airport official said.
These two planes are parked at a remote location on the airport’s southwestern side.