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| Founded | 1954 | |||
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| Fleet size | 10 | |||
| Destinations | 13 | |||
| Parent company | NACIL | |||
| Headquarters | Mumbai, India | |||
| Key people | Arvind Jadhav,CMD | |||
| Website | www.airindia.com | |||
Air India Cargo is the cargo division of Air India, it is based in Mumbai. The airline operates freighter services to twelve domestic and two international cities.
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Air India Cargo was set up in 1954, and started its freighter operations with a Douglas DC-3 Dakota aircraft, giving Air India the distinction of being the first Asian airline to operate freighters.
A member of IATA, Air India carries all types of cargo including dangerous goods (hazardous materials) and live animals, provided such shipments are tendered according to IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations and IATA Live Animals Regulations.
At the warehouse in Mumbai, Air India has developed a system of inventory management for cargo handling of import/export functions. This takes care of the management of cargo, supports Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) messages with Indian Customs and replaces to a great extent paper correspondence between Customs, Airlines, and the custodians. This also replaces manual handling and binning of cargo at the warehouse in Mumbai by Air India.
The merger of Indian Airlines and its domestic subsidiary Alliance Air led to the acquisition of one Boeing 737-200C aircraft from Alliance's fleet, plus 10 Boeing 737-200s. Three of these were phased out of service, while five were converted to freighters in the United States. One of these was also painted in Indian Airlines old livery for a brief period after conversion. All six aircraft are now flying on Air India Cargo domestic routes, while the remaining two 737-200s were either stored to be sold off or scrapped.
Air India also converted four of its Airbus A310-300 into freighters in Dresden, Germany, these were deployed on Dammam-Frankfurt route. After ending international operations two were leased out to new cargo startup Aryan Cargo Express, while a third was sold to an African company.
In November 2007, Air India partnered with GATI, a leader and pioneer in express distribution and supply chain solutions for a dedicated freighter Service using the 737s.
With rising competition from local cargo airlines as well as financial issues, Air India Cargo have phased out the A310F fleet, they also abbandoned plans to convert additional A310 and 737s to freighters and are to sell the six operational 737s as well, three of which are now flying on behalf of Indian Post.[1]
Air India Cargo serve the following cities, it also has ground truck-transportation arrangements on select destinations.
International operations were also carried out to Dammam and Frankfurt previously.
The Air India Cargo fleet consists of the following aircraft (as of December 2011):[2]
| Aircraft | In Service | Notes | |
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| Boeing 737-200(Adv)F | 5 | all to be phased out [1], three currently operated for India Post |
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| Boeing 737-200C(Adv)F | 1 | ||
| Total | 6 | ||
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