FOREIGN WINGS

THE WORLD'S THIRD-LARGEST AVIATION MARKET DOES NOT MANUFACTURE A SINGLE COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT, AN ENGINE, A SIMULATOR, OR THE SOFTWARE THAT BOOKS ITS TICKETS. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS SUGGEST THAT EFFORTS ARE BEING MADE TO OVERTURN THAT PERCEPTION

- BY K. GIRIPRAKASH

ANY Indian airport, and the baggage carousels you see are equipped with foreign-built systems.

The Spanish company, Indra Sistemas, operates the radars that guide aircraft through India’s airspace. The biometric gate scanners are from a Swiss firm called SITA. The ticket that brought the passenger here was sold through either Amadeus, headquartered in Spain, or Sabre, incorporated in Texas.

It’s ironic that none of these products is made in India despite the fact that the components, engineering, and design used in these products are regularly outsourced to Indian manufacturers. No Indian-made aircraft serves mainstream commercial fleets either.

The contrast is clear. While Indian civil aviation is galloping and is now the world’s third-largest market, with 4.2% of global air traffic originating from India, according to the International Air Transport Association, very few aviation equipment items are manufactured here, even as Indian firms now build complex aerostructures and components for almost every Airbus and Boeing platform.

ICRA projects that on a combined basis, Indian carriers will serve between 210 and 215 million passengers this financial year.

Each year, the expansion of the fleets continues apace. In 2023, Indian airlines had placed orders for 1,100 aircraft. Within two years, according to a reply in the Rajya Sabha in July 2025, the order book had swelled to around 2,026 aircraft, all from three domestic carriers, namely Air India Group, IndiGo, and Akasa Air.

THE IMPORTED AIRCRAFT

The numbers are real. The growth is real. And nearly none of the infrastructure driving that growth is Indian.