In what might be aviation’s most embarrassing mystery, Air India just “rediscovered” an entire aircraft it didn’t even know it owned! A massive 43-year-old Boeing 737-200 had been sitting abandoned at Kolkata Airport for 13 years, completely erased from the airline’s records, until airport officials finally sent a wake-up call demanding its removal.
The Forgotten Flying Machine
Registered as VT-EHH, this aircraft began its journey with Indian Airlines in 1982, was leased to Alliance Air in 1998, returned in 2007 for cargo operations with India Post, and was finally retired in 2012. But instead of being properly disposed of, the jet sat idle in a remote corner of the airfield and disappeared from the airline’s fixed-asset documents.
Air India CEO Campbell Wilson admitted in an internal note to employees that the airline had completely lost track of the aircraft until alerted by Kolkata airport officials, writing: “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!”
The Costly Oversight
The oversight meant depreciation schedules, insurance records, maintenance forecasts, and financing-related registers failed to reflect its existence. The aircraft did not factor into the valuation during the Tata Group acquisition because it was completely omitted from internal records.
During its 13-year slumber on the tarmac, Kolkata airport managed to recover nearly Rs 1 crore in parking charges from the airline. The forgotten jet stood out for 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.
#DNA #DNA #DNAWithRahulSinha #AirIndiaFlight #Kolkata | @rahulsinhatv pic.twitter.com/vUFod1y8WZ — Zee News (@ZeeNews) November 29, 2025
From Forgotten to Functional
The aircraft was finally removed from Kolkata Airport on November 14, transported on a tractor-trailer to Bengaluru, where it will now serve as a training asset for maintenance engineers. This marks the 14th abandoned aircraft cleared from Kolkata airport in the past five years.
The episode underscores why rigorous record validation is crucial when overhauling large, historically complex organizations, reflecting legacy gaps that once shaped the former state-run airline’s asset management practices.
The incident serves as a costly reminder of how even massive steel aircraft can simply vanish into bureaucratic black holes, until someone finally asks the obvious question: “Whose plane is this?”
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