Indian Airlines To Place Order for 1,500-1,700 Aircraft Over Next 2 Years: CAPA India

Feb. 8—NEW DELHI — Indian airlines are expected to place order for around 1500-1700 aircraft over the next two years, aviation consultancy firm Centre for Aviation CAPA India has said. Currently, airlines in India have over 700 commercial aircraft in operation and less than 800 airplanes are on order.

The Tata Group-led Air India and India's largest airline IndiGo are expected to be the largest contributors as CAPA India expects the mammoth organisations to place an order of 500 aircraft each.

"It could end up being the largest order in global aviation industry, in terms of both the number and value of aircraft, which are expected to include a mix from the A320neo and 737 MAX families, as well as widebody equipment," CAPA India said.

Supply chain issues, which have hit the delivery schedule for airlines worldwide, are likely to ease by the end of 2023-2024 but the significant backlog of orders could take years to address, CAPA India added. Aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Boeing had 12,669 unfulfilled orders as of December 2022.

Akasa and Go FIRST will need to place scale bets by entering into new orders with a sense of urgency while SpiceJet needs to actualise its current order and prepare for further expansion, it said.

The wide-body market in India will also receive the much-needed focus in India as Air India is expected to place an order of around 70 wide-body aircraft, CAPA India said. Currently, Indian carriers operates less than 50 widebody aircraft while UAE's Emirates has a fleet of over 260 wide-body airplanes.

The industry should not be caught off-guard by the influx of capacity and preparing for the pace of expected growth is critically important as well, CAPA India cautioned.

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