AI scouts for fuel suppliers at Washington, Tel Aviv airports

Air India is looking for fuel suppliers at Washington and Tel Aviv airports, as the national carrier prepares to expand international services.

The state-owned airline plans to start services to Washington and Tel Aviv in the coming months.

For Washington, Air India plans to fly Boeing 777 while for Tel Aviv Boeing 787 is to be pressed into service.

As part of expansion plans amid stiff competition in both domestic and international segments, the carrier has announced plans to fly to Washington, Tel Aviv as well as some cities in Africa.

It has now floated a tender seeking entities to supply fuel for its flights at Washington, the US and Tel Aviv, Israel.

This month, Air India CMD Ashwani Lohani was in Israel. "At Israel to assess the feasibility of starting a new flight between Delhi and Tel Aviv," he said in a Facebook post last week. Contracts for the fuel supply is to commence from May 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018, as per the tender document.

"At those stations where our qualified personnel are not available to carry out the quality control and refuelling procedures, the fuel supplier shall use Air India Limited's quality control and refuelling procedures," it said.

The deadline for submitting the bids is March 27.

There are also plans to start services to Toronto while flights to Copenhagen are scheduled to be launched in May. Besides, Air India is looking to increase frequency on routes such as Melbourne, Sydney Colombo, Kathmandu, Singapore and Bangkok.