In a staggering case of corporate oversight, Air India has finally located a passenger jet it officially lost more than a decade ago, only to be slapped with a colossal parking fine for its prolonged stay at an airport.
A Plane Lost in the System
The bizarre saga began in 2012 when the national carrier misplaced one of its Boeing 737 aircraft following a flight. The substantial 30-tonne jet seemingly vanished from the airline's records. After failing to track it down, company bosses eventually wrote the asset off their books.
For months, staff reportedly hunted for the empty jet, a search prompted by what sources have described as serious 'administrative lapses'. The confusion was compounded by the plane's history: it was previously registered to Indian Airlines, a state-owned carrier that merged with Air India 18 years ago, and had later been leased to the Indian postal service and converted for cargo use.
The Stunning Discovery and a Hefty Bill
The mystery was abruptly solved at the start of December 2025, when Air India received a demand from Kolkata Airport. Authorities instructed the airline to remove the aircraft from a remote corner of the tarmac where it had been quietly gathering dust for 13 years and settle a substantial parking fee.
In a further twist, it has been reported that Air India initially denied the plane was theirs. However, the paperwork trail led back to them. The airline has now been told it must pay 10 million rupees (approximately £82,000) for the decade-plus of unauthorised parking.
Root Cause and Wider Context
The core of the error appears to stem from a documentation failure. Reports indicate that Air India CEO Campbell Wilson had decided the aircraft should be decommissioned, but this critical decision was never properly recorded in official documents, leaving the plane in administrative limbo.
This incident comes at a challenging time for Air India's operations involving Boeing aircraft. Last month, the airline suspended operations on three Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners for extensive investigations. This followed a tragic crash earlier in the year on June 12 in Ahmedabad, which killed 241 of the 242 people onboard, including 53 UK citizens.
The sole survivor, Briton Viswashkumar Ramesh from Leicester, told Sky News he is still suffering physical pain and trauma from the ordeal. The decision to ground the Dreamliners was made after four serious in-flight incidents, including one where Flight 171 to London Gatwick struck a building shortly after take-off.
This combination of a farcical loss of a major asset and a tragic safety crisis paints a picture of an airline grappling with profound systemic challenges, where administrative failures can have both costly and heartbreaking consequences.
