Now, desi carriers to place orders for lk aircraft: CAPA

Now, desi carriers to place orders for lk aircraft: CAPA 

IndiGo Expected to Lead With 500 Aircraft Order

• Mumbai: Air India's 470 aircraft order is set to be momentous in the Indian aviation industry's growth as in the next 24 months other domestic carriers, led by IndiGo, are expected to place orders for a total of 1,000 to 1,200 aircraft, the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) has forecast. "India is, perhaps, on the cusp of a long-awaited and historic change... it may finally be set to take its place as the global aviation market of the 21st century," the report said.

• Almost every Indian carrier is expected to order more aircraft in the coming two years for fleet replacement as well as growth, but the next humongous order is anticipated from IndiGo.

• "IndiGo has been planning to place a significant or der of around 300 aircraft prior to Covid, which was deferred due to the pandemic. This is now likely proceeded This is now to proceed and could be even larger than previously envisaged, increasing to around 500 air aviation system. craft now," said the recently released CAPA report titled 'India: The next growth engine of global aviation'.

• Currently, all Indian carriers together operate about 700 aircraft. Some of the global behemoths alone operate a much larger fleet-Ameri- can Airlines operates a fleet of 935 aircraft. But with these mega orders, the coming decade is set to witness a steep climb in India's aircraft numbers. For India then, preparing for the pace of preparing pace growth that is expected is critically important.

• "Ordering aircraft is arguably a relatively easy task. Far more challenging is to prepare the entire aviation ecosystem to be able to absorb these aircraft," it said. The industry should not be caught off-guard by the influx of capacity as happened around 2005 to 2008 when aircraft were grounded due to a shortage of crew or around 2014 to 2019 when sustained year-on-year growth of close to 20% challenged the entire aviation system.

• "There will be a need to align policy, regulation, availability of skills, knowledge development, infrastructure, which includes air- ports as well as airspace, competition and consumer interests, with global best practices," it said.

• Manpower shortage pilots, engineers, technicians, air traffic controllers apart from technocrats for various civil aviation regulatory bodies and security agencies, that is- would be another challenge.