After 13 Years, Air India Discovers 43-Year-Old Boeing 737 It Didn’t Know It Owned

A Boeing 737 that had been lying idle at the Kolkata airport for more than a decade has exposed that Air India had forgotten it even owned the aircraft. The 43-year-old Boeing 737-200, abandoned since 2012, was finally taken out of the airport on November 14, hauled atop a tractor-trailer, and dispatched to Bengaluru, where it will now serve as a training asset for maintenance engineers. Its removal marks the 14th abandoned aircraft cleared from the airport in just five years.

Air India’s chief executive, Campbell Wilson, acknowledged the lapse in an internal note to employees, confessing that the airline had absolutely no record of the aircraft’s existence until officials at Kolkata airport flagged it.

“Disposal of an old aircraft is not unusual,” Wilson wrote. “This one is because we didn’t even know we owned it.”

According to officials, the aircraft had essentially slipped through the cracks during Air India’s privatisation transition, disappearing from its ledgers and missing from institutional memory.

The Only One Sold With Its Engines

The forgotten jet stood out for yet another reason: it was the only one among 10 retired Air India aircraft sold with its Pratt & Whitney engines still intact. All others had been stripped clean before sale.

During its 13-year slumber on the apron, Kolkata airport managed to recover nearly Rs 1 crore in parking charges from the airline.

Bought in 1982, Retired in 2012

Registered as VT-EHH, the aircraft began its journey with Indian Airlines in 1982 before being leased to Alliance Air in 1998. It returned to Indian Airlines in 2007 for cargo runs and later transitioned to Air India after the IA–AI merger. Its final operational stint was with India Post before it was finally retired in 2012.

Several of the other abandoned aircraft removed from Kolkata have since been reborn as themed restaurants. Among the 14 cleared planes was a historic Dakota once flown by former Odisha chief minister Biju Patnaik during a daring 1947 rescue operation in Indonesia now restored and displayed in Bhubaneswar.

As of now, only two defunct ATRs belonging to Alliance Air remain stranded at the airport.