Air India (AI, Delhi International) has discovered a B737-200(F) that was parked in Kolkata and lost from the airline’s registers before its privatisation and acquisition in 2022 by Tata Sons, chief executive Campbell Wilson revealed.

Abandoned for 13 years, VT-EHH (msn 22863) was repeatedly left out of Air India’s internal records and was not factored in during the valuation of Tata’s acquisition. It was not found until Kolkata airport administrators urged the airline to move the aircraft, which was parked and abandoned in a remote corner.

“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! Many years before privatisation, this aircraft had been decommissioned in order to operate for India Post and was omitted from many documents,” Wilson said. He added that now the carrier had got rid of the aircraft and “in doing so, removed another old cobweb from our closet.”

ch-aviation data shows that VT-EHH operated for Air India as a freighter between August 2007 and June 2011. Before that, it flew for Alliance Air (India) between 1998 and 2007, and Indian Airlines between March and August 2007.

Air India operated a total of five B737-200(F)s, taking delivery of the first in 2007 and retiring the type in 2018, according to ch-aviation fleets history data. A fellow B737-200(F), VT-EGG (msn 22283), was reportedly grounded and stored at the same time as VT-EHH, but was eventually moved to Rajasthan to become a themed restaurant.