New Delhi: Aircraft manufacturers are expecting lucrative deals at the upcoming five-day Aero India 2025 exhibition, starting February 10 at Bengaluru. Aero India is Asia’s premier aerospace and defence exhibition that promises a spectacular showcasing of aviation technology and thrilling aerial performances.
The manufacturers are also expecting good business from India as a tiny fraction of 1.40 billion people use the airways to travel. The rise in income tax bar from ₹7 lakh to ₹12 lakh as announced in the Union Budget 2025 is also expected to fuel the lower middle class aspirations to fly.
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In view of the Central government’s plan of expanding flight operations to smaller towns, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has also scheduled to hold its annual general meeting in June in New Delhi, the capital of the world’s fifth-largest economy. This is another clear sign of India’s market punch.
The sustained growth of its economy and middle class have made India the third-largest air market in the world, after the United States and China. “India is the rising star of global aerospace,” said Remi Maillard, Airbus India and South Asia chief in a media interaction recently. “It is the fastest-growing commercial aviation market in the world — and it will remain so for the next 20 years.”
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Boeing, another aeroplane manufacturing firm and arch-rival of Airbus, is also participating in the Aero India show in Bengaluru with great expectations. “It’s the most dynamic market on the planet — and certainly the most exciting,” said Boeing India head Salil Gupte.
With air traffic from newly operationalised airports on the rise and India’s civil aviation ministry boasting of soaring skies in a sector experiencing a meteoric rise, the defence ministry’s show holds a lot of importance for the section. That growth should lead to an increase in traffic in South Asia, mainly in India, of more than 7% per year until 2043, according to Boeing’s forecasts.
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The surge in air traffic is expected to grow as per capita air travel remains low in India at a mere 0.12 vis-a-vis 0.46 in China. This underlines the potential of the Indian aviation market. Railways still remain the most popular mode of transportation, but travelling by trains crisscrossing a country about three-quarters the area of the European Union is often slow and chaotic.
As per the Boeing’s estimates, about 18 million people travel by train daily in India, as compared with 4,30,000 air passengers. “And if barely 2% of the train passengers take to the flights, size of the air market would simply double.
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Slippers in flights
Ever since coming to power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had emphasised on making air travel within access to the common masses, Accordingly, the government had placed the aviation sector in priority and launched various initiatives, including developing infrastructure to smaller towns under ‘Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik’, known by its acronym UDAN-RCS. A regional airport development program unveiled under the regional connectivity scheme by upgrading under-serviced air routes in 2016.
“A common man who travels in slippers should also be seen in the aircraft — this is my dream,” Modi was quoted as saying by the aviation ministry.
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The number of airports has more than doubled in the past decade — from 74 in 2014 to 157 in 2024, according to ministry figures. The government is pouring in millions of dollars and is promising to increase the numbers to between 350 and 400 by 2047, the centenary of India’s independence.The government has opened programmes to train some 30,000 pilots and at least as many mechanics over the next 20 years.
India entering in long-haul market
The major manufacturers say the next leap in the airline sector in India will be international.
“The kind of revolution we have seen in the Indian domestic market in the last few years is now happening in the long-haul market,” said Airbus’s Maillard, adding the company was “leveraging India’s locational advantage, demographic dividend and economic growth”.
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Gupte said Boeing was expecting more orders for large aircraft capable of long-haul flights, which he believes will make up 15% of India’s total fleet within the next 20 years.
India need 2800 new aircraft
As per the Boeing forecasts, Indian market needs at least 2,835 new aircraft in the next two decades, which include three-quarters of the total supplies from the market, and the rest as replacement.
For Airbus, India made up nearly a 10th of its global commercial aircraft delivered last year–766 commercial aircraft in total to 86 customers in 2204, with 72 going to Indian carriers. Boeing, which was shaken by scandals related to the production quality of its aircraft, and slowed down by a strike, has not released figures for 2024.
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Air India has already placed the demand for 470 aircraft– 250 Airbus, 220 Boeing–in 2023 and ordered 100 more Airbus planes last year. India’s largest carrier, low-cost airline IndiGo, is also not satisfied at having placed the largest order in volume in the history of civil aviation–500 from Airbus in 2023.
