Hal Plans Separate Civil, Military Arms

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) has decided to restructure its entire manufacturing divisions and have separate civil and military wings.

It also expects to privatise its civil division once it finds a foreign partner to help manufacture 100- and 50-seater civilian aircraft.

HAL chairman and managing director R N Sharma told newspersons here yesterday that he expects the disinvestment to take place once the public sector undertaking (PSU) decides to begin manufacturing civil aircraft.

He said the company had received positive response from eight to nine manufacturing companies which had been approached for partnering HAL to build the two types of aircraft.

 

He also announced that HAL had signed an agreement with Fairchild Dornier to take over the entire production of Dornier 228 and has submitted a proposal for manufacturing the fuselage and the wings for Dornier 328 under sub-contract.

A team from Dornier was currently in India to study the proposal. Produced under the license from Doriner GmbH of Germany, the 19-seater new generation aircraft has been rated as a highly adaptable, and low operating aircraft.

Sharma said HAL has decided to spin off centres of excellence in its 12 divisions, each of which will make specific aircraft parts. Earlier, these divisions were allotted different aircraft to manufacture.

This is being done to save on costs and time, the HAL chairman said.

He also announced that HAL will soon be doubling the production of both Airbus and Boeing doors from two each per month to four.

He said HALs flagship programme, the advanced light helicopter (ALH), an intermediate twin engine five-tonne chopper, was slated for delivery in 1998.

Since its first flight in 1993, four prototypes are now flying while the fifth is scheduled for take off this year itself.

ALH has been designed with close interaction with the military. It has a cruise speed of 245 km/hour, with a maximum rate of climb of 13 m/s and a range of 800 km.

Sharma said Hal expects to gross a revenue of Rs 1,800 crore during 1996-97 with a net profit of around Rs 130 crore.

HAL also manufactures the MiG series under licence from Russia. MiG 27M is a single seater, single engine variable geometry fighter bomber equipped with advanced high accuracy integrated attack system.