India will require 1,880 passenger, cargo aircraft by 2038: Airbus

Airbus has assumed the Indian middle-class population will grow to 1 billion or 68% of the total population by 2038, as compared to the present 540 million

European aircraft maker Airbus says India will require 1,880 new passenger and cargo aircraft between now and 2038, on a conservative estimate.

Airbus has 80 per cent of the plane order backlog from this country. Its latest India Market Forecast says of the said requirement, up to a fifth could be wide-body aircraft. It estimates 440 will be needed to replace retiring planes and 1,440 are for growth during this period.

Taking into account the 440 retirements, India’s existing domiciled fleet of 510 aircraft will quadruple to 1,950 by 2038, by its projection.

Airbus has assumed the Indian middle class population will grow to 1 billion or 68 per cent of the total population by 2038, as compared to the present 540 million. 

The proportion of middle class people travelling by air will also double from the present 10 per cent, besides a four-time increase in trips per capita between now and 2038, according to the forecast. The 20-year traffic growth in Indian aviation is pegged at 7.7 per cent annually, almost twice the world average of 4.3 per cent.

Anand Stanley, president and managing director of Airbus India and South Asia, issued the forecast report at Wings India 2020 -- a biennial international civil aviation conference and exhibition -- in Hyderabad on Thursday.

The company, he said, delivered aplane a week to India last year and will continue to do so this year, by their plan.

"India is already at the heart of Airbus operations -- no Airbus aircraft is made without a component or a design element sourced from India," he said. The company was working to double its sourcing volume from this country to more than $1 billion by 2025, he added.

Airbus has a 4,500-strong engineering and design team at its Bengaluru development center, a component manufacturing collaboration with Tata Group in Hyderabad and a 45-plus vendor base in India. The company's India export, spread across manufacturing, design and technology, is currently $650 million (Rs 4,800 crore) annually.

It has an order backlog of 730 aircraft for India. A third of this is to IndiGo. Last year, it delivered a total of 78 planes to Indian airline companies.

The company is also looking forward to an opportunity in fixed wing defence aircraft to India, said Stanley.

On the coronavirus pandemic's impact, he said their global market forecast was driven by long-term macro economic projections, rather than short-term factors.