Air India has announced the rediscovery of an old 43-year-old Boeing 737-200, which has been sitting in a quiet corner of Kolkata’s airport for over a decade as a Virtual Fleet aircraft (essentially a ‘ghost’ aircraft). The airline discovered its ownership through a recent audit itemizing aircraft number and its relationship to the airline, dating back to a lease taken over from Alliance Air and its service as a cargo aircraft for India Post, and it was only recently identified as Air India property.
The aircraft (registration VT-EHH) was delivered to Air India in 1982; it has been parked for 13 years on an old, remote pad at Kolkata’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport. Given all the staff turnover, corporate restructuring, and mergers and privatization that have taken place over the years, the paperwork track of this aircraft fell through the cracks and was labelled lost until staff at the airport contacted Air India regarding the clearance of this aircraft, allowing the airline to find that this aircraft was “misplaced” on its paperwork.
The invoice is perhaps the most shocking thing about this. According to local news reports, the total fees for parking and handling over the 13-year period amount to almost ₹1 crore (approximately ₹10 million). Based on current mid-market exchange rates, the incident would convert to approximately $111,000.
How could a jet simply disappear? The unusual situation with jets possibly missing is largely due to the scarcity of records. This has happened because records were poorly transferred between companies, and also because of the deregistration of the aircraft as a result of freight conversions, and because old equipment is often subject to neglect. It is believed that this aircraft originally had an unchanged Pratt and Whitney JT8D engine mounted on it when it was retired from service, which is an example of how aircraft retain characteristics from different time periods in aviation history and serve as a bridge to connecting them.
While the aircraft previously identified as VT-EHH will no longer be used as a commercial flying aircraft, it does have a useful purpose: it will be used as a non-flight training platform for the company’s maintenance staff. The transport of this aircraft to Bengaluru by ground highlights the importance of utilizing the fuselage frame of previously operated aircraft for hands-on training with maintenance staff, and it also illustrates that the company has removed 14 non-flying aircraft from Kolkata over time due to their lack of useful operational function. The continual removal of non-flying frames demonstrates that the logistics of these abandoned frames can be more of a concern than just a one-time expense.
This incident also demonstrates a unique opportunity to identify and examine how this multinational airline recognizes and tracks down an asset (aerospace equipment) that it may have “lost” in its historical record and provide guidance for those who might experience similar challenges in identifying, managing, and valuing airline assets. From a historical perspective, aircraft represent one of the most complex types of assets owned by companies because they are associated with a long series of records (maintenance histories, leases, registrations, regulatory documents, etc.) that must accompany an aircraft from owner to owner. Unfortunately, when the connections to these records break (or become incomplete), the airplane can be “lost” in administrative limbo and remain “in plain sight.”
As for the plane’s mystery: it’s off the tarmac, the payment is in, and it will be used to teach future pilots how to avoid similar incidents. But these aircraft didn’t just generate headlines; they also caused a considerable expense for aviation accountants and airport personnel regarding unaccounted-for properties as well.
