‘Indian aviation of high interest to US industry’
WASHINGTON: There is tremendous interest among American industry majors in the Indian civil aviation industry, and India hopes that this can translate into investments across a range of domains – from manufacturing of aircrafts and their components, to airport infrastructure; from urban air mobility to aircraft navigation systems, union minister for civil aviation, Jyotiraditya Scindia, has said.
Indian civil aviation industry has also bounced back from the Covid-19 pandemic-induced crisis, slowly but surely, with a lot of latent demand coming to the fore, the minister told HT in an interview.
He was in New York meeting a range of industry stakeholders last week. He met representatives of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Pratt and Whitney, Blade Air Mobility, and visited the Air Route Traffic Centre at Long Island. The minister also attended two roundtables – one with member companies of the US-India Business Council and the other with the diaspora.
Scindia’s visit comes soon after finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman concluded a visit to the US during which she participated in spring meetings with World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, and engaged with a range of industry stakeholders,
in California.
On April 11, both defence minister Rajnath Singh and external affairs minister S Jaishankar were in Washington for the 2+2 ministerial dialogue.
“The first thing is there is a great deal of interest in the US in India and the way our industry has grown over the last several years. There has been interest evinced in the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) sector, in terms of urban air mobility with electric vertical take-off and landing (E-VTOL) and urban air vehicles, as well as rising interest in fleet acquisition in India which is going to take place over the next couple of years,” he said.
He added that the successful trial launch of GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) in India had also got a “lot of traction” with companies.
“Across the whole ecosystem of civil aviation, there is tremendous interest,” he said.
When asked whether he saw this fitting in with the government’s broader approach of a “self-reliant” India and ensuring investors make in India, Scindia said, “Absolutely. And therefore setting up of MROs, the setting up of urban mobility aircrafts, be it drones or E-VTOLs, even manufacturing of aircrafts from helicopters to components of aircrafts, there is a great deal of interest and I hope that translates into investments.”
India had announced an ambitious drone policy last year. Suggesting that it was important to look at drones from the broader perspective of air mobility vehicles, the minister said he expected a great amount of investment in India in that space and pointed out that the government had already come out with a list of the first 14 vendors under the PLI (Production-linked incentive) scheme.
“I spent time with Blade and Beta systems that are coming out with the first E-VTOLs in the US and though FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency) approvals are awaited for this, the seeds are sown across the world and India has to be one of the first movers on this technology...”
The minister was optimistic about recovery of the aviation industry. “We touched 407,000 passengers about ten days ago. Our daily numbers are between 300,000 to 380,000. There is sustained demand from tourism as well as the business sector... And I see us climbing up that graph, slowly but surely.”