Air India has broken ground on a new multi-facility Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) hangar at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, the first step in a plan to bring more of its engineering and maintenance work in-house.
The ground-breaking ceremony for the airline’s new hangar was held at the airport on Thursday. The ceremony marks the start of construction work on the site. The facility spans nine acres, about 36,420 square metres, and will be the first in the national capital able to accommodate one widebody and one narrowbody aircraft at the same time. No other facility in the national capital can currently service a widebody and a narrowbody aircraft simultaneously.
MRO stands for Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul, the industry term for the scheduled and unscheduled engineering work that keeps aircraft flying, from routine inspections to major structural repairs.
Air India MRO: what the hangar will hold
The hangar will have a 25-metre clear height and column-free spans designed for next-generation aircraft. A 25-metre clear height with no pillars breaking up the floor means even the largest next-generation jets fit inside without obstruction. It will also have advanced fire protection systems and will be built to Indian Green Building Council green norms.
The hangar is planned as a multi-facility complex, with the maintenance bays, engineering offices, spare-parts warehouse and cabin shop all inside a single boundary. At about 36,420 square metres, the nine-acre plot is sized to hold the hangar bays, engineering offices and the spare-parts warehouse in a single complex, keeping the people and the parts close to the aircraft being serviced.
The ceremony brought together the airline’s top leadership and the airport operator’s senior management. It was attended by Air India chief executive and managing director Tewolde Gebremariam, along with senior executives from the airline, including P Balaji, Group Head for Governance, Regulatory, Compliance and Corporate Affairs, and from Delhi International Airport Limited, including deputy chief executive Manomay Rai.
Why Air India is building its own MRO
The airline said: “The facility will enable Air India to centralise key engineering and maintenance activities, bringing critical functions under direct operational oversight.” Air India said the move supports in-house maintenance capabilities, fleet reliability and a stronger aviation ecosystem in India. The statement frames the hangar as part of a wider effort to strengthen domestic engineering capability rather than scattering the work across third-party facilities.
Heavy maintenance checks can keep an aircraft out of service for days or weeks, and airlines usually book that work at specialist facilities well in advance. Having its own hangar lets the airline schedule the work around its flying programme instead of fitting into someone else’s slots.
Bringing maintenance in-house gives the airline direct control over scheduling and quality instead of depending on outside vendors. That control matters because maintenance slots, turnaround times and engineering standards all sit within the company’s own operation.
How the Air India hangar cuts ground time
Air India said centralised inspections, cabin upkeep and defect rectification at the facility will significantly reduce the time aircraft spend on the ground. Centralising the work means inspections, cabin upkeep and repairs happen in one place rather than across scattered facilities. Integrated engineering offices and an on-site spare-parts warehouse will replace fragmented workflows and cut logistics costs.
A dedicated cabin shop will allow faster repairs to aircraft interiors, reducing reliance on third-party vendors and minimising cabin-related defects. A cabin shop on site means interior repairs start sooner, without waiting on outside vendors. The airline said it will also speed up the return to service of aircraft grounded for technical reasons, getting planes back into the schedule sooner.
Once complete, the hangar will be the only Air India facility in the national capital that can take a widebody and a narrowbody aircraft together. For the airline, the Delhi hangar centralises at one site the inspections, cabin work and defect repairs that decide how quickly an aircraft returns to service. The project puts the airline’s heaviest maintenance work under one roof at the Delhi airport, alongside the engineering teams and spare parts that support it.