Boeing hikes Indian aircraft purchase forecast by 15 per cent

Boeing yesterday raised by 15 per cent its forecast for Indian commercial plane purchases, saying growing affluence will prompt more middle-class Indians to take to the skies.

Over the next two decades, Indian airline companies could buy up to 1,150 planes, spending $130 billion, Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, said.

The Chicago-based company had earlier forecast that India would spend $100 billion to purchase 1,000 planes by 2030.

“There is strength and resilience in the India commercial aviation sector over the long term,” said Dinesh Keskar, president of the Indian arm of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company.

India’s “potential for future growth of air travel, both domestically and internationally, is among the greatest in the world,” Mr Keskar said in an emailed statement.

A Boeing executive officer told AFP the raised forecast was linked to an increasingly strong outlook for India’s long-term economic growth and a fast expanding middle class in the country of 1.2 billion people. “The key driver has been how India’s GDP has been shaping up and what is the potential going forward for growth,” the executive said.

Cheaper airline fares as the aviation sector liberalised created a massive migration from India’s congested trains to planes that revolutionised travel.

But that shift lost pace with the global financial crisis which sent India’s fiercely competitive airline industry into a tailspin.

Passenger numbers began rebounding toward the second half of last year as economic growth picked up and Mr Keskar forecast air travel in India should largely recover by next year.

“We went through the deepest recession in the history of aviation but now India’s recovery is one of the fastest,” remarked Mr Keskar.

“We believe there will be a record 50 million passengers this year if the trend continues,” he added. India’s nine carriers flew a record 44 million passengers in the financial year that ended March 31. He added that India would become one of the “significant leasing markets” with a large chunk of planes being taken by Indian carriers on lease.