Air India plans to sell six Boeing freighters

National air carrier Air India plans to sell its six Boeing freighters with indications that the airline may shelve its plans to spin off its cargo business into a separate subsidiary.

"We are looking at selling out our six Boeing 737-200 freighters as the plans to have a a dedicated cargo business through a subsidary is unlikely to take off now," Air India sources said here.

Air India would be inviting tenders from the interested companies shortly to phase out these aicraft, sources said.

Besides, the airline has already put on sale its four A-310 freighters, they said.

The six Boeing 737-200 freighters belongs to the erswthile Indian Airlines and were converted into cargo planes from passengers aircraft in 2007 as the airline had plans to launch a dedicated domestic cargo service, using Nagpur as its as the hub.

Apart from configuring Boeing aircraft, the airline also converted four Airbusa 310-300 passenger aircraft into freigheters at a cost of USD 40-million to put them into the proposed cargo operations.

However, the plans have not been able to fructify and remain on papers for almost three years.