Tl;dr – An Air India plane recently was rediscovered, after over 12 years hiding in plain sight.
Wild one today. Recently an Air India Boeing 737 turned up in an airport parking lot, 13 years after it was last accounted for.
Evidently the cargo plane was decommissioned after a flight over 12 years ago, and the airline simply lost track of the place (as one does) while it sat in the remote Kolkata airport parking lot accruing fees that Air India now disputes.
According to a report from the Independent, the plane originally belonged to Indian Airlines and was brought into Air India’s realm via a 2007 merger. However, as “the plane was ‘repeatedly left out of internal records’, including during the airline’s privatisation in 2022, meaning it never appeared on key transfer documents,” it seems to have simply been forgotten.
This sounds like some fun paperwork to sort out!
