'Vanished From The Books': Air India Sells 40-Year-Old Plane It Didn't Know It Owned

In what appears to be a bizarre aviation urban legend, Air India completed the sale and transfer of a four-decade-old Boeing 737-200 plane that it did not know it owned, as it lay grounded and forgotten

at the Kolkata airport since 2012, according to an internal post from Air India CEO Campbell Wilson.

The airline said it didn’t even know the plane officially belonged to them until airport staff in Kolkata pointed it out, asking the airline to remove the plane. “Though disposal of an old aircraft is not unusual, this one is – for it’s an aircraft that we didn’t even know we owned until recently,” said Wilson in his post.

‘Omitted From Documents’

As per Wilson, the plane, registered as VT-EHH, had been decommissioned years earlier for India Post, and a trail of paperwork quirks led to its omission from several official documents during privatisation. Over time, the plane ended up being parked in a “very remote” bay at Kolkata Airport, completely forgotten by the airline.

The matter came to light when airport colleagues in Kolkata flagged its presence and asked the airline to remove it. After a verification process, the sale and transfer of the plane were completed last week.

“Over time, it was lost from memory and only came to light when our friends at Kolkata Airport informed us of its presence in a (very) remote parking bay and asked us to remove it! After verifying that it was indeed ours, we’ve now done so – and in so doing removed another old cobweb from our closet!” Wilson said.

About VT-EHH

Information available on the aircraft tracking website planespotters.net showed that VT-EHH is more than 43 years old and was delivered to Indian Airlines in September 1982. The plane was leased by Alliance Air in February 1998 and returned to Indian Airlines as a freighter in July 2007.

In August 2007, the aircraft came to Air India. Under government ownership, Indian Airlines was merged with Air India in 2007, and Air India was acquired by the Tata Group in January 2022.

(with inputs from PTI)