[AutoDowntowner]

This is interesting. US president says 'Tata's order will create huge no. of jobs in USA'. Big moment.

[maddy42]

The Tatas seem to be ready to pounce on the future opportunity and this order makes the hub and spoke model outdated and the point to point being the winner.

Air passengers comparison between india and china: Both the countries are bound to contribute 45% of the worlds air travel passengers due to our population.

India China
1989 12.7 million 11 million
2000 17 million 61 million
2010 64 million 266 million
2019 167 million 659 million

Our scope for growth is endless. Our airports are bursting at our seems and any future airport has to plan out for the next 50 years at the time of construction.

In 2021 - 22 Bengaluru handled 16 million passengers and any one who travelled through would vouch for the airport lines making it feel crowded but well handled.

(Please dont add politics, this is just to show you the growth prospects possible.)

[Gannu_1]

What a lovely Valentine’s Day gift from Tata to the country and the biggest order in aviation history no less!

I would really love to see the Maharaja reclaim the lost glory and make the travellers choose Air India for flying. Tata really have their work cut out!

[sagsaw]

Maybe a contra view

but do we have so much projected air traffic to support 500 aircrafts?

And why should have Tata risked with teh 737MAX?

Can anyone give a till date report of utilization vs capacity of aircrafts across carriers and how many of them are profitable vs their debt status?

[shortbread]

Originally Posted by sagsaw

Maybe a contra view

but do we have so much projected air traffic to support 500 aircrafts?

And why should have Tata risked with teh 737MAX?

Can anyone give a till date report of utilization vs capacity of aircrafts across carriers and how many of them are profitable vs their debt status?

I think we have the world's fastest growing aviation sector. With more new airports coming, this will only continue to grow. To top this all most of the Indian traffic is eaten up by middle east carriers due to AI's historical lethargy.

[sagsaw]

Originally Posted by shortbread

I think we have the world's fastest growing aviation sector. With more new airports coming, this will only continue to grow. To top this all most of the Indian traffic is eaten up by middle east carriers due to AI's historical lethargy.

I was looking for some fine grained data as I am not too much into aviation sector.

We as an economy have always been booming but data should also indicate it.

Else companies taking on debt for CAPEX and then the OPEX n revenues just dont keep up with the returns required.

Ultimately banks also are involved and its our money in those banks there.

100 billion dollars of order value of 500 planes is both Euphoric and similarly scary.

[shortbread]

Originally Posted by sagsaw

I was looking for some fine grained data as I am not too much into aviation sector.

We as an economy have always been booming but data should also indicate it.

Else companies taking on debt for CAPEX and then the OPEX n revenues just dont keep up with the returns required.

Ultimately banks also are involved and its our money in those banks there.

100 billion dollars of order value of 500 planes is both Euphoric and similarly scary.

Institutions don't simply hand out money, they do their own due diligence. Not to say that they get it right all the time, but stand to lose if they do not. So there's thought behind the process.

Nobody is paying list price and that's what the 100 billion figure is made up of. Airlines go for bulk purchases for bigger discounts and this information remains confidential at the time of announcement.

For granular data there's Google but here's the gist. In the last decade, the number of operational airports in India has DOUBLED! Today we have the third-largest domestic market in the world, behind only the United States and China, with more people choosing to travel by air than ever before. It's no more a luxury. All this and we are yet to reach our pre COVID peak. In the next 5 years the govt. plans for another 200+ airports are going to be added. In Dec'22 all domestic carriers recorded 80%+ capacity utilisation.

All this is just domestic. AI and it's international routes/slots are a different story altogether.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by sagsaw

I was looking for some fine grained data as I am not too much into aviation sector.

Originally Posted by sagsaw

but do we have so much projected air traffic to support 500 aircrafts?

Sir if you take the effort of reading through even only the last few pages of this thread you will get your answers.

[apachelongbow]

Originally Posted by audioholic

A noob question for the ones who are well versed with the industry - What does Air India and the sister concerns plan to do with so many aircraft? Indigo which is dominating the industry and with a high reputation is doing with 300 or so narrow body aircraft. What would AI do with 400 Narrow body aircraft? Do they expect market to grow and them to soar beyond 6E?

Even the bigger aircraft numbers surprise me when AI isn't an international favorite either.

India is ideally the gateway between the east and the west. If corrupt politicans hadn't sold the country we would have destroyed Dubai and Singapore as transit hubs by now. Atleast the current government seems to have a vision to correct this wrong doing. With the push in increasing the airport and airway infrastructure and a big purchase of almost 1200 new airplanes by all major indian airlines we should see Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Kolkatta become world class transit hubs in the next 10/15 years.

[Adorablejim]

Originally Posted by sagsaw

Maybe a contra view

but do we have so much projected air traffic to support 500 aircrafts?

And why should have Tata risked with teh 737MAX?

Can anyone give a till date report of utilization vs capacity of aircrafts across carriers and how many of them are profitable vs their debt status?

I really don't understand why people have the misconception that B737 MAX is unsafe. The aircraft was always regarded safe. However with the bigger engine, Boeing had to push the placement of the engine forward which changed the dynamics of the airflow for the frame. To compensate the change in airflow, Boeing introduced something called the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) which was not updated to any of the airlines fearing time loss for re-certification and costs that would be incurred to retrain the pilots by each airline. However they also incorporated into the MCAS system 4 different unique conditions which according to Boeing analysis these 4 conditions would never occur simultaneously for the MCAS to fail under normal flying conditions. Unfortunately these 4 conditions occured simultaneously in both LION air and ETHIOPIAN airlines crash. Boeing also assumed that in the event of any uncontrollable situations, pilot would disable the autopilot and take manual control of the aircraft.

The aircraft is absolutely safe and can fly further than an A320

[sagsaw]

Originally Posted by Adorablejim

I really don't understand why people have the misconception that B737 MAX is unsafe. The aircraft was always regarded safe.

I beg to differ ... aircraft engineering and safety is not as trivial as you have explained. In depth in detail youtube videos are avaialble explaining what went wrong.

Boeing happily paid 2.7 bilion dollar fines as huge orders got immediately cancelled after crashes.

I rest it here but I personally will never travel by 737 MAX for sure.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55582496

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Adorablejim

I really don't understand why people have the misconception that B737 MAX is unsafe.....
The aircraft is absolutely safe and can fly further than an A320

Originally Posted by sagsaw

I beg to differ ...
I rest it here but I personally will never travel by 737 MAX for sure.

All,

The safety or otherwise of the Boeing 737MAX is, I'm sure, on the minds of several readers. From whatever I have read, and I'm no expert on the 737, the software issues of the MAX have been ironed out and we could consider it a safe to fly aircraft now. Since the 1980s airliners have become so safe and reliable that we have forgotten how in earlier years many jet liners went through an initial painful phase of learning by crashes. Even the iconic A320 which dominates the domestic skies in India and which was the first aircraft flown by software went through two shock crashes before stabilizing and becoming the best selling jetliner of all times. Same with the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 the best selling tri-jet of all time. What happened with the 737MAX was tragic and unpardonable driven by the then Boeing management's eagerness {greed?} to put the MAX into service without letting the engineers iron out the kinks in the software. I believe that sorting out is now done making the MAX no more safer than the A320.

The MAX returned to service, starting with Brazil, in December 2020 and has been re-certified as fit to fly by India, China and EASA the last mentioned being the gold standard amongst aviation safety regulators. More than 600 737MAX aircraft have been delivered in 2021 and 2022 and millions of flight hours logged since December 2020 with no news is good news.

Having dealt extensively with both Boeing and Airbus as an engineering vendor for many years, in my first career, and seen the raw underbellies of both organizations I would vote for Boeing as the better organization any day.

The only pity is that none of the senior management of Boeing were convicted of crime. That is a failure of the American judicial system not of the 737MAX.

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

India has a significant unaddressed domestic aviation passenger and small parcel market that needs addressing. We are also a case where 60% give or take a little of our foreign travel inbound and outbound is addressed by foreign carriers instead of our own carriers. Further under the Udaan scheme of taking air travel to Tier III and Tier IV cities the Govt plans to open up to eventually 486 cities and progress down that is tracking strongly.

The UDAN scheme is really one of the untouted achievements of the Indian aviation industry (and government) in the past 10 years. It's interesting how tiny airports in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat are connected to major hubs - especially useful since despite the advent of expressways, road travel is still slow and dangerous in India.

I do have an offtopic question for you though, I wonder why the UDAN scheme isn't being used to its full potential in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. At one point, these states had the highest number of international airports in India, so I wonder why they are lagging behind? There are existing airports like Vellore which is still not served by any airlines. I suspect the same might be the case with Andhra and Telangana as well. Is it due to the lack of local demand or the folly of the respective state governments?

Originally Posted by ads11

Someone mentioned the A321 XLR on here. I'm curious to see some long haul skinny (I believe that's the term used in the aviation industry for low volume routes, correct me if I'm wrong) routes. I know DEL and BOM are being made into the main AI hubs and that makes sense but I wonder if something like an A321 XLR could serve a daily LHR-CCU flight for eg in a two level cabin config perhaps? Obviously there's the slot restrictions at LHR there but I'm just thinking out loud here.

Air India did fly the LHR-CCU route during COVID which was at the time, the first direct connection between CCU and Europe after a really long time. Air India currently connects LHR to Hyderabad, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Amritsar and Goa (apart from Mumbai and Delhi) though these flights will shift to Gatwick from March. Calcutta has to be one of the most comically underserved airports for a major metro city in India, I hope the re-invigoration of Air India changes this. Its strange that Chennai and Bangalore isn't connected by Air India to London though British Airways does provide direct flights. I do see MAA slowly declining as well in a similar vein to CCU, as early as 6-7 years ago, MAA had more international flights than Bangalore but no longer the case - showcased by the fact the Blue-Dart/DHL moved their base from Chennai to Bangalore.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by dragracer567

The UDAN scheme is really one of the untouted achievements of the Indian aviation industry (and government) in the past 10 years. It's interesting how tiny airports in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat are connected to major hubs - especially useful since despite the advent of expressways, road travel is still slow and dangerous in India.

I do have an offtopic question for you though, I wonder why the UDAN scheme isn't being used to its full potential in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. At one point, these states had the highest number of international airports in India, so I wonder why they are lagging behind? There are existing airports like Vellore which is still not served by any airlines. I suspect the same might be the case with Andhra and Telangana as well. Is it due to the lack of local demand or the folly of the respective state governments?

Good question @dragracer567. I have not been keeping track of the towns that are getting included. But very encouraging to hear the progress. I was one of the private sector representatives invited to offer from time to time inputs to the Govt committee that was formed to formulate the scheme. This was 2015-2016 so my memory is a bit hazy. There is a financial contribution the State needs to make to the construction or refurbishment of the runway and fitment of air traffic control and navigation aids equipment.

Second more importantly the scheme has a cap on fares and a subsidy that the air operator receives per seat whether filled or not. Experience has indicated only the larger airlines {e.g. Indigo} had the economies of scale to operate at breakeven. They forsaked the subsidy in exchange for more slots on the super routes connecting the 6 to 10 largest cities. The smaller newer feeder operators using older smaller machines could not break even due to operations fractured over too many small stations. All this has played a role in services opening or not. The scheme will need tweaking if it is to be successful and viable for 15 and 30 seaters.

[fhdowntheline]

What is more interesting is the overlap in capability of both the Airframers. They have gone for both the Max and the 32X as well as the 350 -9/10 and the 789 /777X. How these would be utilized is interesting. Are they looking at replicating the model of the US Big 3s?