An airline has finally traced a passenger aircraft it lost more than a decade ago, only to be hit with a hefty parking bill running into tens of thousands of pounds.
Air India reportedly misplaced one of its Boeing 737 aircraft in 2012 after the jet vanished from the company’s operational records following a flight. The 30-tonne aircraft could not be accounted for at the time and was eventually written off after repeated attempts to locate it failed.
The mystery resurfaced in early December when Air India received an unexpected notice from Kolkata Airport, asking the airline to remove the aircraft from a remote section of the airport’s tarmac. Airport authorities also demanded payment for long-term parking, amounting to about £82,000 for the 13 years the aircraft had been left unattended.
According to reports, Air India initially disputed ownership of the plane, insisting it did not belong to the airline. However, investigations later revealed that the aircraft had originally been registered to Indian Airlines, a former state-owned carrier that merged with Air India about 18 years ago.
After the merger, the aircraft was reportedly leased to the Indian postal service and later converted into a cargo plane. The confusion over its status has been blamed on what sources described as “administrative lapses” and incomplete documentation.
It was also reported that Air India CEO Campbell Wilson had approved the aircraft’s decommissioning, but the decision was never properly reflected in official records. As a result, staff spent months unsuccessfully searching for the jet, unaware that it had been sitting quietly at Kolkata Airport all along.
The discovery has sparked embarrassment for the airline and renewed scrutiny of its internal record-keeping processes, as it now faces the financial cost of a plane that was effectively forgotten for more than a decade.
