President Ram Nath Kovind boarded the Air India One-B777, the newly inducted VVIP Plane, aircraft on Tuesday for its inaugural flight to Chennai, according to a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement. Kovind is visiting Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh to offer prayers at the Sri Venkateswara Swamy temple, it said.
This is the first flight of the newly acquired Air India One- B777 with the head of the state on board. The aircraft is fuel efficient and has longer range than the B747-400, deployed for similar VVIP operations. The aircraft has state-of-art interiors with also reduced noise levels.
Air India One is the call sign for the VVIP aircraft used by the president, vice president and prime minister.
On the occasion of inaugural flight of Air India One – B777, President Kovind commended pilots, crew members and the entire team of the Air India and the Indian Air Force for operating the state-of-the-art aircrafts and facilitating VVIP movements within India and on state visits abroad.
India recently received its much awaited new generation of VVIP aircrafts at the Delhi International Airport. The VVIP aircrafts are Boeing 777-300 ER duo which will be used by the Prime Minister and President of India on their official tours and arrived from Boeing’s facility in the US. The Boeing 777 will replace the ageing Boeing 747 currently in service.
The new planes, for the first time, gets self-protection suites for the aircraft in the form of infrared and electronic warfare countermeasures suites, countermeasure dispensing systems and missile warning sensors.
