Air India finds long-lost 43-year-old Boeing 737 that had even disappeared from its own records

Air India somehow misplaced a 43-year-old Boeing 737-200 and forgot about it for a decade.

And now they’ve sold the aircraft.

This story is a combination of unusual circumstances and avoidable mistakes.

But it also shines a light on a problem that most countries in the world have faced since pretty much ever.

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How Air India somehow forgot owning this plane

You can misplace a pair of glasses, your car keys, and perhaps even your wallet, but you definitely wouldn’t misplace your plane.

Well, Air India did.

They found out about it when Kolkata Airport called them and asked them to remove the plane, at which point the airline said something along the lines of ‘but that’s actually not our plane’.

There was no record of it due to chronic administrative lapses back when the plane belonged to Indian Airlines, a state-owned company.

But then a thorough internal audit confirmed that yes, this was indeed Air India’s plane.

This incredible story is a combination of two factors.

One, a chaotic maze of mergers between companies, creating one of those situations in which the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing.

And two, the seemingly unavoidable ocean of oversights and blind spots when public money is involved.

This 43-year-old jet – the tail number is VT-EHH – once flew Indian Airlines, Alliance Air, and then even operated as a freighter for India Post before being grounded in 2012.

The first owner, Indian Airlines, was a state-owned airline, which later merged with Air India, which is a privately owned company.

And that’s the key element of this story.

With a private company, you’re definitely keeping an eye on your assets, especially the expensive ones.

So that means that you might miss a desk or a chair, but you won’t misplace an airplane.

But when public spending is involved, it’s all a bit of a blur, because it’s everybody’s money, which is the same as saying that’s nobody’s money.

And apparently that’s how you end up forgetting about a plane for 13 years.

This is the grandad of the aircraft we all use regularly

The Boeing 737-200 was a modified version of the original 737.

The 737 was first introduced in 1968, with Lufthansa, and it has since evolved into a family of aircraft that just about every airline in the world has used at some point.

Amazingly, even though this particular model was unveiled 50-plus years ago and three more generations of 737 have since been launched, some 200s are still in service as of 2025, both for commercial and military purposes.

For instance, the Indonesian Air Force, Indian Air Force, and Peruvian Air Force all use Boeing 737-200s.

Commercially, it’s only being operated by lesser-known airlines such as Air Inuit and Buffalo Airways.