New Delhi, Sep 8: The first Boeing 787 Dreamliner of Air India touched down at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here to a water cannon salute.
The plane, painted in red and yellow livery of Air India, landed at the main runway of the airport at 5 pm and was given water-cannon salute as it taxied to the bay.
Air India chairman and managing director, Rohit Nandan and senior Civil Aviation Ministry and airline officials were present to receive the Dreamliner.
The Dreamliner took around 15 hours of flying time from Boeing's Charleston facility in South Carolina in US to Delhi plus a 90-minute stopover at Frankfurt for re-fuelling.
Air India, which has ordered 27 Dreamliners six years ago, would get two more of these planes in the next few weeks. A total of eight of them would arrive by March 2013.
The aircraft is expected to become the mainstay of Air India's global operations and is being touted as the key to its turnaround plan.
For the next two months, Air India would use the B-787s to operate on select sectors like Delhi-Dubai, Delhi-Kolkata, Delhi-Bangalore and Delhi-Amritsar for the crew to practice more landings and take-offs. So far, a total 65 pilots have been trained to fly this plane.
The mid-size plane has four variants, with the longest -range one capable of flying over 15,000 Km non-stop. By December, Air India would introduce these aircraft on new long-haul sectors like Melbourne and Sydney, apart from the older ones like Japan, Middle East and several European destinations.
