By Bikram Vohra
It is indeed a fact that India has only accessed 8% of her population when it comes to commercial flying, making the potential prodigious. This vast open field had Minister of Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia receive great and earnest interest from American aerospace on his current visit to the US. Everyone sees India as the market of the future at all levels, including the construction of new airports and heliports and the creation of a viable entity that is functional and efficient, a network of regional terminals that makes the promise of a new regional connectivity a reality. The ‘Udan’ concept has leapt off the paper and is no longer a proposal.
Under the auspices of BLADE, which is an urban air mobility platform which lets users of its app to book seats on scheduled flights throughout the Northeast and Westcoast of the United States, Scindia addressed a large gathering of the top echelons in the business and later met with Raytheon Technologies Ambassador Paul Jones and the Senior Vice President of its subsidiary, Pratt & Whitney’s Rick Duerloo.
One of the more important meetings he had was with Lockheed Martin’s wide-ranging relationship with India, which is something on the cards. Its new acquisition is Sikorsky, and its VP Hamid Salim reportedly had a fruitful discussion on the helicopter front. All this is in keeping with the Lockheed Martin statement that it is seeking a game-changing relationship with India on defence and civil aviation fronts.
Scindia shared a telling sentiment. “We are looking at a number this year at about 100 million pax, up from about 50 million in COVID years. And I see us reaching almost about 400 million by 2030. So, that’s the potential we are looking at.”
He is now moving to Canada for meetings with Bombardier and Airbus representatives, seeing how Airbus has bought out the Canadian leader in bizjets. Discussions would hover on the A220 purchase, the need for smaller capacity aircraft like even converted business jets and a possible opening salvo on the potential interest in the CRJ Q series and the ATRs, which have done yeoman service in opening up the interior.
The one factor that comes out of this visit is that Scindia has set the ball rolling, and it would make sense if his next stopover was Brazil, where the E-195 is just waiting to be counted.
