New Delhi: The Tata Sons owned airlines—Air India and Vistara—have secured the CAR (Civil Aviation Requirement) 145 approval from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to integrate their aircraft line maintenance operations.
According a release, this strategic integration will merge Vistara‘s line maintenance activities under Air India‘s facilities and scope. This will be an important step to combine maintenance resources of both airlines.
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The integration, airline operation experts say, will significantly improve the Air India’s technical capability by leveraging the combined expertise and optimizing processes, resources and systems. It will also ensure greater self-reliance in fleet maintenance, and implement industry-leading practices across all maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operations of both the airlines.
The merger will enhance operational performance and reduce aircraft turnaround times to bolster on-time performance (OTP). With a unified maintenance team and resources, Air India will be better positioned to service a mixed fleet of widebody and narrowbody aircraft, enhancing schedule integrity and reliability of operations.
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So far, Air India has 12 in-housed line maintenance stations across the country. Integration of the facilities will further bolster the in-house line maintenance capabilities of Air India by making it more self-reliant and streamlined. Airline experts said that key technical activities related to aircraft and its components to come under a single integrated scope and ambit of work.
“The combined strength of the Air India maintenance team will bring every aspect of work under one umbrella and help streamline and co-ordinate the work processes and systems of the diverse technical teams hitherto involved in the process,” said a release from Air India.
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Technical experts said that an enhanced synergy of the combined resources will also ensure real-time availability of records of all activities for fast diagnosis and troubleshooting of technical issues by tracing and correcting of the systems involved.
The new strategy will also help the airlines restrain their expenses on regular and critical maintenance of aircraft, as it will not require mobilising resources and augmenting trained manpower to cater to various maintenance and check of the aircraft in the fleet of the group carriers, including Air India Express-the aircraft of which has been serviced by the Vistara team, the release added.
