Wings India show turns out to be a damp squib

India’s biennial civil aviation show, the Wings India 2020, may end up as a damp squib going by the watered-down presence of bigwigs of the civil aviation industry on day one of the event here on Thursday.

The main aim of the business-to-business event has been to provide a common platform for sellers and buyers of aircraft and aircraft-related goods or services in the country. Aircraft have been a major attraction of the show since its inception in 2010.

There were merely 12 aircraft parked in the static display area, compared to over 50 airplanes and helicopters in the heydays of the event, and the industry. Out of the 12 aircraft in the current edition of Wings India, only Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer has brought in its E195E2 145-seater aircraft, which matches with Airbus A320 and Boeing

757 in seating capacity. The rest of the 11 are small aircraft, including one from the Indian Air Force that is not a part of the civil aviation industry.

Given the turmoil in the global economy in general, and the civil aviation sector in particular, the fifth edition of civil aviation show, unlike the first few, appears to be have been bankrolled by Central and state governments. At least two in every three big stalls at the exhibition were set up by either government agencies or public sector units.

The Coronavirus (Covid-19) scare appears to have had an effect on the air show as the delegate count appears to have declined. The duration of the current show has also been truncated to three days by dropping the two open days for general public.