Air India’s rediscovery of a long-forgotten Boeing jet has exposed deep structural weaknesses in the airline’s former state-run asset-management practices, raising new questions about oversight during the years before privatization.
The carrier recently learned that a 43-year-old Boeing 737-200 had been sitting abandoned at Kolkata Airport (CCU/VECC) for more than a decade — unnoticed in official records and omitted from financial documentation across multiple administrative cycles. The discovery came only after airport officials contacted the airline to request that the obsolete aircraft be removed from the airfield.
The jet, registered VT-EHH (MSN 22863), was delivered to the former Indian Airlines on the 8th of September 1982 and later flew for Alliance Air before Air India converted it into a freighter in 2007. It operated in partnership with India Post before being grounded in 2012. From there, it slipped into obscurity, stored in a remote corner of the airport and effectively erased from the carrier’s fixed-asset records.
The lapse triggered a detailed internal audit, which found that the aircraft had disappeared from depreciation schedules, insurance documentation, maintenance forecasts, and financing-related registers. Because the airline was still state-owned at the time, the financial consequences were ultimately borne by taxpayers. As the original press release noted, “At the time, taxpayers were responsible for losses, and the outdated processes allowed this lapse to persist.”
The plane remained invisible to the airline’s operational ecosystem for years. Insurers had no active file for it, maintenance teams had no scheduled tasks associated with it, and finance departments did not track its long-term cost exposure. The omission meant the aircraft was not factored into asset valuations during the Tata Group takeover — a striking example of how incomplete documentation can distort the true condition of a large enterprise.
Air India CEO Campbell Wilson acknowledged the extent of the oversight to employees, explaining that across several years leading up to privatization, VT-EHH was repeatedly absent from internal registers used to track property and equipment. According to the press release, “At the time, taxpayers were responsible for losses, and the outdated processes allowed this lapse to persist.”
Additional historical accounts referenced in the release indicate that VT-EHH had once been stored alongside another classic jet, VT-EGG (MSN 22283), at Kolkata. While VT-EGG was eventually transported to Rajasthan and turned into an aircraft-themed restaurant, VT-EHH never left the airport. Some aviation observers noted that the aircraft had previously been seen at Delhi Airport (DEL) before ultimately ending up as a themed structure in Rajasthan.
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