Air India – like most of the Indian Airlines seem to be having a time of it. The state owned carrier though has announced some juicy information about their incoming 787’s.
Air India will be operating these birds a bit tighter than ANA has, with 256 seats in total – 18 Business Class seats ,and 238 economy class seats.
In addition, to fit the Economy Class seats in, they will be configured in 3-3-3 formation (9 abreast).
In Flight Entertainment systems will be powered by a Thales i8000 Top Series system. Which is nice.
Delivery plans have also appeared:
- Airplane “35” will be the first plane to be delivered – it’s due for first flight soon to support the GEnx-1B engine programme certification.
- Airplane “29” will be the second to be delivered in March
- Airplane “25”, is expected in April,
- Airplanes “26” and “38” will be delivered in May,
- Airplane “30” and Airplane “32” are targeted for June.
The numbers in this case refer to Boeing’s production number of 787.
There are questions to the delivery schedule, as some of the birds listed above require some reworking to bring them to post-certification standards.
As with all 787 to be operators, this looks like one to watch…