Originally Posted by
PVDtoDEL
shahadil should be able to shed some light... I've seen a few around, but the vast majority are in the new livery..
the old livery are the 22 year old aircrafts (all 320's) which are still flying. they are nearing the end of their life cylce and most of them have been either sent back or broken down and sold as scrap. incidentally, the old 320's had bogie landing gear (8 wheels in the main landing gear, instead of the 4 you see on any other 320's) which was specially designed for indian airlines, to operate to airports whose runways in those days were not as (well good) as they are now. this landing gear requires replacement now which incidentally is not available as it was made only for indian airlines 22 years back, so to save on the landing gear cycles, they are using it on long routes and the aircraft does only about 4 landings a day, instead of the 8-10 for other aircrafts. so you will see it flying out of kerala airports to the gulf, or probably in delhi/bangalore. about 4-5 of these old 320's are still in the old livery, the rest have been painted in the new air india livery.
the "indian" livery remains on the 5 319's which were leased initially.
all the new 43 aircraft are in the air india livery except for the first 321 whose "white" is a little different than all other aircrafts.