Industry Boeing sees demand for 2,300 new aircraft in India

The manufacturer stated, that 2,300 new aircraft are needed to support the robust domestic economy. 2,300 new aircraft are roughly valued at US$ 320 billion, related to current list prices.

According to Boeing, the county will see strong domestic passenger traffic in the upcoming 20 years. Moreover, especially low-cost carriers will be rapidly expanding its businesses. Over this course, new aircraft are needed.

Main Indian low-cost carriers are IndiGo, GoAir, SpiceJet, Air India Express, Jetconnect or JetLite. IndiGo however is currently the largest low-cost airline in the country. The carrier recently took delivery of its 200th aircraft and the first state-of-the-art A321neo.

Dinesh Keskar, senior vice president, Asia-Pacific & India Sales for Boeing Commercial Airplanes said: "To meet this increased domestic air traffic growth, we see the vast majority of available airplane seats coming from LCCs [...] The success of this market segment will mean more than 80 percent of all new airplane deliveries in India will be single-aisles.”

In 2018, India experienced more than 10 million passengers on average – each month. Keskar added, that he thinks the Boeing 737 MAX Family will be the best choice for low-cost carriers as the operational costs are very low.

Keskar explains: "The Indian economy is projected to grow by nearly 350 percent over the next two decades to become the third largest economy in the world [...] This will continue to drive the growth of India's middle class and its propensity to travel both domestically and internationally, resulting in the need for more new fuel-efficient short- and long-haul airplanes."

Boeing released, that it sees that only 10 regional aircraft are needed until 2037. Especially the single-aisle aircraft type will see 1,940 total deliveries. When it comes to wide-body aircraft, the manufacturer predicts the need to deliver 350 of such aircraft to Indian customers.

Besides new aircraft, which can transport a larger amount of passengers, other services will be essential to guarantee the economic expansion as well. For example, the country will see services like maintenance, flight training, digital analytics or engineering to be major driver in economic growth in the region´s commercial aviation industry.