India Will Require 1,750 More Aircraft Over Next 20 Years: Airbus

India will need 1,750 new passenger and cargo aircraft over the next 20 years to meet the rise in both passenger and freight traffic, according to Airbus’ latest India Market Forecast.

In order to meet the demand, the country will require 1,320 new single-aisle aircraft and 430 wide-body ones, at an estimated valued of $255 billion, the report projects, the Hindu BusinessLine reported.

“India will witness an over five-fold growth in air traffic in the next 20 years. Considering the infrastructure constraints, Delhi alone will need 70 daily flights of A380s, just based on the current scenario at United Kingdom’s busiest airport Heathrow, where 10 per cent of the daily traffic is being handled by A380s. That is going to be the potential demand for aircraft in India,” Joost Van Der Heijden, head of marketing, Asia and North America, Airbus, said on the sidelines of Wings India 2018 event at Hyderabad on March 9.

According to Airbus, India will become the world’s third-largest aviation market by 2019-20. The company has a backlog of orders for over 530 aircraft till date, reported Business Standard.

“Every Airbus commercial aircraft is partly made in India. Airbus has the largest footprint in India of any international manufacturer. Our sourcing volume has grown 16 times over the past 10 years, and is currently at more than $550 million annually,” said Srinivasan Dwarakanath, president, Airbus commercial aircraft in India, Deccan Herald reported. Dwarakanath added that the Indian government’s Make in India initiative is at the heart of Airbus’ strategy, and said Airbus will be delivering one plane on an average per week to airlines in India over the next 10 years.

The company added that although the air traffic growth was likely to be driven by the rapidly expanding economy, factors like the increase in wealth and urbanization, and ambitious government-backed regional connectivity programs were also set to boost the demand for air travel.

The company’s India Market Forecast showed that domestic Indian traffic was anticipated to grow five-and-a-half times over the next 20 years (2017-36), growing to reach the same level as the current U.S. domestic traffic. Traffic serving the Indian market is anticipated to grow 8.1 per cent per year over the next 20 years, almost twice as fast as the world average of 4.4 per cent.

Meanwhile, the success of the Indian government’s UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) scheme for regional connectivity has driven it to extend the initiative for international flights, aviation secretary Rajiv Nayan Choubey said. “We are calling it UDAN international,” Choubey said at the Wings India 2018 event at Hyderabad on March 8.