Business and General Aviation - India Focus
Posted: 18 Oct 2013 06:35
It is proposed that this thread cover these areas broadly -
1. Industries involved in in the design and manufacture of business and general aviation crafts. Includes PSUs and Private Industry.
2. Sales of imported Business and General Aviation (B&GA) crafts.
3. Support infrastructure such as hangars, airstrips, MRO centers, trained personnel.
4. Policy decisions affecting the industry.
Business aviation is a subset of General Aviation and is the use of non scheduled aircraft service for business purposes. Currently India does not make any business aircrafts. However, with the move of Indian businesses towards expanding their global footprint, Business aviation is an industry that will move into a space currently monopolised by scheduled operators. This move will be aided by the greatly improved fortunes of large Indian businesses in the last 2 decades. Moreover, almost every single manufacturer of business jets has the capability to modify the aircraft's to perform military roles such as that of Electronic intelligence gathering, Electronic warfare and high speed transport of senior decision makers in the military. This makes the capability to design, manufacture and support Business aircrafts an important part of both the national economy and security setup.
General aviation is essentially hobby aviation for pleasure, casual travel, entertainment, emergency medical services, agriculture, geographic surveys etc. This is the proving grounds where many of the worlds leading aircraft manufacturers have risen from. Sadly this sector is non existent in India. Currently, RajaHamsa Ultralights(http://www.x-air.in/) is the only Private sector company that makes aircrafts of any kind that are certified and flying. Mahindra Aerospace has had the first flight of their NM5 aircraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAL_NM5) but it has since dropped out of the news and no new flights have happened that I am aware of. OF course we have the PSU behemoths that are capable of making B&GA aircrafts, but they have their own defense related priorities. In contrast here is a wiki list of manufacturers in USA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:A ... ted_States .
Unless there are Indian designed and made products that are capable of challenging US products in USA, I do not believe that it is economically viable for a manufacturer to survive by only selling in the Indian sector. However, I could be wrong and the experience of startups such as ICON Aircrafts based in California, USA opens our eyes to the profits to be reaped by designing a product keeping the customer in mind. ICON aircrafts have a single aircraft in the Light Sport Category which has currently some 900+ orders and managed to stay afloat through the downturn of 2009. The point that is being made is that a good product is the first step towards establishing an Indian footprint in the global B&GA industry and it will do us well on BRF to keep an eye and bring to focus individuals and companies working towards this end.
A small side note, I have taken to heart the lamentations of our dear fearless Moderators regarding the Nukkadization of multiple threads. Therefore, although I will continue to post my infrequent ignorant rants , I will attempt to keep it within the hallowed walls of the Nukkad dhaga. It is the will of our dear Moderators , as indicated by the forum title, that this be a purely Business and Technology discussion zone.
1. Industries involved in in the design and manufacture of business and general aviation crafts. Includes PSUs and Private Industry.
2. Sales of imported Business and General Aviation (B&GA) crafts.
3. Support infrastructure such as hangars, airstrips, MRO centers, trained personnel.
4. Policy decisions affecting the industry.
Business aviation is a subset of General Aviation and is the use of non scheduled aircraft service for business purposes. Currently India does not make any business aircrafts. However, with the move of Indian businesses towards expanding their global footprint, Business aviation is an industry that will move into a space currently monopolised by scheduled operators. This move will be aided by the greatly improved fortunes of large Indian businesses in the last 2 decades. Moreover, almost every single manufacturer of business jets has the capability to modify the aircraft's to perform military roles such as that of Electronic intelligence gathering, Electronic warfare and high speed transport of senior decision makers in the military. This makes the capability to design, manufacture and support Business aircrafts an important part of both the national economy and security setup.
General aviation is essentially hobby aviation for pleasure, casual travel, entertainment, emergency medical services, agriculture, geographic surveys etc. This is the proving grounds where many of the worlds leading aircraft manufacturers have risen from. Sadly this sector is non existent in India. Currently, RajaHamsa Ultralights(http://www.x-air.in/) is the only Private sector company that makes aircrafts of any kind that are certified and flying. Mahindra Aerospace has had the first flight of their NM5 aircraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAL_NM5) but it has since dropped out of the news and no new flights have happened that I am aware of. OF course we have the PSU behemoths that are capable of making B&GA aircrafts, but they have their own defense related priorities. In contrast here is a wiki list of manufacturers in USA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:A ... ted_States .
Unless there are Indian designed and made products that are capable of challenging US products in USA, I do not believe that it is economically viable for a manufacturer to survive by only selling in the Indian sector. However, I could be wrong and the experience of startups such as ICON Aircrafts based in California, USA opens our eyes to the profits to be reaped by designing a product keeping the customer in mind. ICON aircrafts have a single aircraft in the Light Sport Category which has currently some 900+ orders and managed to stay afloat through the downturn of 2009. The point that is being made is that a good product is the first step towards establishing an Indian footprint in the global B&GA industry and it will do us well on BRF to keep an eye and bring to focus individuals and companies working towards this end.
A small side note, I have taken to heart the lamentations of our dear fearless Moderators regarding the Nukkadization of multiple threads. Therefore, although I will continue to post my infrequent ignorant rants , I will attempt to keep it within the hallowed walls of the Nukkad dhaga. It is the will of our dear Moderators , as indicated by the forum title, that this be a purely Business and Technology discussion zone.