The transformation of Air India is one of the most remarkable stories to come out of India’s current commercial aviation boom.
“The Everest of turnarounds,” as British weekly The Economist once described it, has transcended the confines of the airline industry to become a symbol of the south-Asian nation economic growth and newfound confidence on the global stage.
The 81st Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which took place in Delhi on June 1-3, 2025, provided an ideal opportunity for Air India CEO Campbell Wilson to brief the attending media, AeroTime among them, about the ongoing implementation of the carrier’s ambitious plans.
The key message shared by the Australian executive is that Air India has significant room for growth.
“If India gets to Chinese levels of per capita air travel, we can keep filling our planes just with domestic demand,” he explained.
But it is not just about quantity. What followed Air India’s acquisition by Tata Sons in 2021 is also a titanic effort to rebuild one of aviation’s iconic brands from the ground up.
The new Air India, complete with its distinctive, colorful brand and livery, is the result of the amalgamation of four airline brands, which included legacy brands Air India and Air India Express, plus Vistara and AirAsia India. The latter two, which were part of Tata Sons portfolio of investments, have been folded into Air India.
Wilson proudly highlighted how this complex four-way process has been implemented in a period of less than two years.
Air India 2.0.
But Air India’s corporate restructuring was only one piece of the puzzle, and the airline’s internal processes, technology, and infrastructure were also in dire need of radical change. And this is precisely what has been the focus of Wilson and his team’s attention over the past few years.
To illustrate the scale of the challenge, during the press briefing Wilson shared before and after images of some of the most transformative interventions.
Few areas have been left untouched in the quest to build a world-class airline. No less than 63 of Air India’s facilities, some of which were in an apparent state of neglect, have been closed down and the functional areas they hosted moved to a state-of-the-art headquarters in Gurugram, near Delhi.
The airline has also replenished its ranks with fresh talent, putting an end to a 20-year freeze on non-flying staff recruitment and driving the average age of staff down from 54 to 35.
In order to onboard all these new members of staff and guarantee the new service standards, Air India has also been investing in the expansion of its own in-house flight training and technical capabilities. This includes building a new maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility in Bengaluru (BLR).
This transformation has also touched Air India’s digital and technological infrastructure with $200 million invested in a thorough redesign of all of the airline’s digital assets, including its website and mobile app.
But perhaps the most radical and certainly eye-catching developments have been those aimed at changing Air India’s passenger experience – almost beyond recognition.
Expanding Air India’s fleet
In addition to updating ‘soft’ aspects of the experience, exemplified by the shaking up of customer service protocols or the thorough revamping of the inflight experience, from onboard menus to inflight entertainment, Air India is also investing heavily in its fleet.
Since 2023 Air India has ordered 570 aircraft from both Boeing and Airbus. This figure includes 50 Airbus A350s, several of which have already been delivered, 210 A320 family aircraft, as well as 20 Boeing 787s, 10 B777Xs and 190 B737 MAX aircraft.
In parallel, Air India is also investing $400 million to retrofit its legacy fleet with state-of-the-art cabins. The retrofit of the airline’s narrowbody fleet is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, while the B787 fleet refit will start in July 2025 and continue until 2027. Air India’s B777 have also received an interim cabin refresh, with a full refit planned to start in 2027.
The new capacity brought by the newly delivered aircraft is indispensable if Air India is to fulfill its bold ambitions. To illustrate the transformational nature of these orders, Wilson pointed to the fact that at the start of this decade there were just 43 active widebody airliners in the whole of India.
This figure may even increase in the near future. On June 2, 2025, Reuters reported that Air India is considering placing an additional order for 200 aircraft. This information echoes previous rumors about potential new orders from Air India. Wilson declined to comment on this report when asked about it by AeroTime during the IATA AGM, saying it was “pure speculation”.
But is there going to be enough demand to fill all these planes? Air India’s main competitor, IndiGo, also has an order book numbering in the hundreds, including at least 60 firm orders for long-haul A350s.
“Wherever we place a plane, we fill it,” Wilson stated confidently. He added that while domestic demand is a major driver, Air India can also tap multiple sources of growth.
Wilson also mentioned the Indian diaspora, numbering in the tens of millions all over the world, as another significant source of demand, as well as the potential of Indian airports when it comes to connecting traffic.
India’s geographical position, at the cross-roads between Europe, East Asia, Africa and Australia, represents an untapped resource, Wilson explained.
“Whereas other airlines depend entirely on connecting traffic, this, for us, will be an extra source of growth,” he said in a thinly veiled reference to the Gulf carriers, which, to this date, have drawn heavily from Indian traffic to feed their global networks.
What’s more, Wilson thinks there is enough room in India for a multiple-hub operation.
In addition to its main base at Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport (DEL), Air India plans to expand its long-haul operations out of Mumbai (BOM) and Bengaluru (BLR), two airports from where it already operates a number of services to Europe and the United States.
In response to a question about potential new routes into that continent, Wilson said: “Every major city in Europe could support nonstop flights to India.” However, he also added that the roll out of new routes will be gradual.
An external factor that may hamper Air India in its international expansion, on a westward direction at least, is the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan.
So far, Air India has had to reroute a number of international flights, adding at least one hour of extra flight time to its European services and three to its North American ones. Some routes now also need to include a refueling stop and operate below capacity.
Wilson explained that if this geopolitical situation is prolonged, absent any mitigation measures, it could cost Air India around $600 million over the course of a whole year. But this is a number that is unlikely to deter Air India from fulfilling its ambitions.
