(Repeats Thursday story with no changes to text)

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Huge crash casts shadow over Air India's ambitious revamp

plan

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Dreamliner plane crashes soon after takeoff in Ahmedabad

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Newer aircraft and better maintenance needed, expert says

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Air India says investigations into incident will take time

By Aditi Shah and Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI, June 12 (Reuters) - The Air India plane crash

in which more than 200 passengers were killed on Thursday has

plunged the airline into its deepest crisis yet and will deal a

heavy blow to its efforts to revamp its reputation and fleet.

After taking the carrier over from the government in 2022,

the Tata Group unveiled ambitious plans to reverse years of

underinvestment in an ageing and outdated fleet and create a

"world class airline", as CEO Campbell Wilson has repeatedly put

it, on a par with rivals like Emirates.

The turnaround has been aimed at tackling its myriad

problems including persistent flight delays, disgruntled

customers, a shortage of spare parts, delayed plane deliveries

and years of financial losses.

"Newer aircraft and better maintenance should be the

hallmark for Air India to survive. Proper maintenance is what

they should be looking into, because Air India has had a

chequered past," said Vibhuti Deora, a former legal expert at

India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.

That past includes, while under government ownership, Boeing

737 flight from Dubai overshooting the runway at one domestic

airport and crashing into a gorge in 2010, killing 158 people.

More recently, its low-cost unit Air India Express saw one craft

skid off a runway in India in 2020, killing 21 people.

Only a few days ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

told an international gathering of hundreds of airline

executives in New Delhi that the country's aviation industry

stood at a crucial point of takeoff.

On Thursday, however, Air India swapped the bright red

colour scheme and logo on its website for a more sombre black

and grey one, covering it with a banner that carried the crashed

flight's number: "AI-171".

"For an airline, the most important thing is the brand's

identity with safety. This will be a major setback for the brand

in that aspect," said Dilip Cherian, a communications consultant

and co-founder of public relations firm Perfect Relations.

'DIFFICULT DAY'

With its maharajah mascot, Air India was once renowned for

its lavishly decorated planes and stellar service championed by

its founder, JRD Tata, India's first commercial pilot.

But since the mid-2000s, the carrier's reputation has

worsened as financial troubles mounted. It has flown widebody

planes with business class seats in poor condition and grounded

some of its new Boeing 787 Dreamliners for lack of spare

parts.

When Tata regained control, the airline was "just in

absolute shambles", its CEO Wilson told Reuters in a 2024

interview, noting that some of its planes hadn't had a product

refresh since they were delivered in 2010-2011.

Air India, which has a 30% share of the domestic passenger

market, has a fleet of 198 planes, of which 27 are 10-15 years

old and 43 are more than 15 years old, the civil aviation

ministry told parliament in March. Air India Express had 101

planes, with 37% of them more than 15 years old.

The plane that crashed on Thursday was 11 years old,

according to Flightradar24.

Rival Indian airlines like IndiGo operate newer

planes.

Air India, which is part-owned by Singapore Airlines

, has placed orders for 570 new jets in recent years

and is in talks for dozens more.

It has even aggressively expanded its international

flight network in the face of the fury of its passengers, who

often take to social media to show soiled seats, broken arm

rests, non-operational entertainment systems and dirty cabin

areas.

It has also been ranked the worst airline for flight delays

in Britain, where its departures were on average just under 46

minutes behind schedule in 2024, according to analysis of Civil

Aviation Authority data by the PA news agency published in May.

It has also been reporting losses since at least fiscal

2019-20. In 2023-2024, it reported a net loss of $520 million on

sales of $4.6 billion.

Before it can make any further progress on these problems,

however, it faces the difficult task of investigating one of

India's worst aviation disasters ever.

"This is a difficult day for all of us at Air India," CEO

Wilson said in a video message.

"Investigations will take time."