Nagpur Today: Boeing Chief & Senior Vice-President, Sales, Asia Pacific & India, Dinesh A Keskar was in the city on December 21, 2013. During his visit, he reviewed all the status of the maintenance-repair and overhaul (MRO) depot facility being developed by Boeing at Multimodal International Cargo Hub and Airport (MIHAN) and Special Economic Zone (MIHAN-SEZ) at Nagpur. While talking to a selected few journalists, he said that 95 per cent of the work has already been completed and even the Hangars are ready and only the work of giving final touches is remaining.
He added that in the next three or four months, they will hand over the entire project to Air India. After taking charge, Air India will then operate it.
Since the project involved both Boeing MRO as well as Air India, the foundation (Bhoomi Pujan) will be done by both the parties.
However, Keskar added that the work of Taxi Way is not completed and without that the entire project will not be operational. (The Aircraft moving to the hangars etc) Maharashtra Government and MADC should jointly complete the work so that the entire project becomes operational at one go.
He added that he did not find any other pending problems in the project as of date. Dinesh A Keskar said that since their part is nearing completion, tentatively they will be able to hand over the entire project to Air India by the first week of April.
At the moment such kind of project exists in India only in Mumbai and New Delhi. So once this project comes into being, it will be the pride of Vidarbha. He added that the project in Nagpur is more advanced with latest equipments and facilities than that of Delhi and Mumbai.
Answering to a question, if the 787s that they had acquired had some problem like the one in the past, (last year one of them had developed some technical snag and had caught fire), he said that there is no problem with any aircraft that they have acquired. He added that eleven aircraft have already being procured. All of them are operational and in working condition. Dinesh A Keskar said that there is a full team of Boeing in India and continuously monitoring and checking the functioning of all the aircraft. As such, he doesn’t see any problem in the future too. All the problems that existed in the past have been sorted out.
The MRO depot facility built by will have over 7,000 employees from Air India Engineering Service, which was hired off from Air India as a separate MRO unit earlier this year, said an Air India official. This project will be Boeing’s second in the world after Shanghai in China.
