Air India's third hangar to have soft opening Friday

Thiruvananthapuram: Air India's third hangar, being developed here, is nearing completion and it will have a soft opening Friday when an Air India Express flight will have a "phase check" there, a senior official said Thursday.

Air India Express now has 20 Boeing 737-800 aircraft and the hangar is coming up at a stone's throw from the Thiruvananthapuram international airport, the airline's chief operating officer P.P. Singh told reporters here.

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"The hangar will be fully complete in March 2009 and till then we will be doing phase check for two aircraft every week. Once complete, all 11 aircraft that are stationed in the three airports in Kerala and the three aircraft that are presently stationed in Chennai will do their test here," Singh said.

Once complete, this will be the country's first fully air conditioned hangar and will operate four shifts and would see a minimum of 200 full-time employees working.

Air India currently has hangars in Mumbai and Delhi.

"The biggest gainer once the hangar becomes operational would be Air India Express, which currently gets its checks done in Mumbai. Every time after 500 hours of flying, the aircraft is flown to the Mumbai hangar. The cost that would be saved would be huge," Singh said.

The initiative for the Thiruvananthapuram hangar started three years ago when the then state government had offered land to Air India for the project.

"Once we are fully operational, we will have two hangars and then we could offer checks to other airlines also. This means we will be earning additional revenues," Singh said.

Air India Express, which completed its third anniversary in April this year, currently operates 87 flights a week to various Middle-East destinations from the three Kerala airports.

"Once the present Haj season is over, we will increase the number of weekly flights and we also plan to operate to airports in Saudi Arabia," he added.
Source: IANS