NEW DELHI: Air India will complete the procurement of all the 27 Dreamliners by October, 2017 as per the contract, MoS for Civil Aviation, Jayant Sinha said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
“Air India has acquired 23 Dreamliners progressively from September, 2012 to January 9, 2017. The Dreamliners aircraft have experienced technical reliability issues, since induction into Air India fleet. These issues, however, do not affect the safety of the airplane due to the system design and inbuilt system redundancy. Further, system improvements are incorporated as a part of reliability enhancement process and the glitches have significantly reduced,” the minister informed the Upper House.
Sinha said one B787-8 aircraft will be delivered in July this year, two B-787-8 aircraft by August and one B787-8 aircraft by October, 2017, the minister said.
Sinha further informed that in compliance with the provisions of Operation, Management and Development Agreement (OMDA), Delhi International Airport Private Limited (DIAL), the developer of Delhi’s IGI airport has reviewed and updated the airport’s master plan in 2016 in consultation with the Airports Authority of India.
“The total area of IGI Airport granted to DIAL is 4608.90 acres of land. The land available is sufficient for executing the expansion plan under the Master Plan, 2016,” said the minister.
“The updated master plan envisages expansion of passenger handling capacity of IGI airport from existing 62 million passenger per annum (mppa) to 109.3 mppa in a phased manner by way of both airside and terminal side developments.”
“The development works include expansion of Terminal 1 and Terminal 3, construction of a new Terminal 4, construction of new runway in three phases, starting from 2017 and till 2034. “The design, project cost and other details are finalized during the finalization of the major development plan in compliance with the OMDA,” he added.