The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Business jets to dominate Indian skies

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Feb 10, 2007
ePaper


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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Business jets to dominate Indian skies

Rasheed Kappan

After conquering the markets in U.S. and Europe, Bombardier sets sights on the sub-continent

ON A NEW HORIZON: Bombardier hopes to market its Global Express XRS in a big way to the Indian corporates.

BANGALORE: Beyond the pale of the rugged, weaponised military aircraft on display at the "Aero-India 2007" airshow, the array of chic, luxurious business jets on the tarmac painted a telling picture of an unexplored Indian civil aviation market with exponential growth prospects. For the record, India has just over 80 business jets but that number is just about to change.

Bombardier's Global Express XRS, the biggest luxury jet in its class dominated that picture, over five of its replicas already bought by big Indian corporates for $ 51 million apiece.

While Raytheon claimed that it had 70 per cent of the Indian market share in terms of number of airplanes sold, Bombardier had a bigger share on dollar terms.

Owning the Global Express for just one year (equivalent to flying 600 hours) would cost a buyer $ 2 million including the crew, maintenance, fuel, landing and parking fee. But despite that huge sum, many corporate buyers were queuing up to buy. And that was the big story of the business jet market in India, building on the robust sales of smaller and mid-sized jets from Cessna, Embraer, Dassault and Gulfstream.

Onboard the business jet, hovering over the Yelahanka Air Base at 10,000 ft on a demonstration flight, Bombardier officials unveiled an aircraft that could easily accommodate 19 passengers, complete with a dining area, a conference cabin and crew facilities. The aircraft can fly 12.5 hours without refuelling and can reach even a South American destination from India with a single stop.

The airplane even boasted a satellite phone as standard feature and an optional satellite television.

For the Indian businessman, hitherto used to only intra-country travels, long-range aircraft is perfect for global business deals. With Indian firms increasingly getting global, business jets such as the Global Express are apparently the solution. Yet, bottlenecks such as long-winded flight clearance permissions, shortage of parking spaces and complex permits for foreign-registered aircraft, remain.

Bombardier officials echoed the global trend, where the business jet market was shifting from the U.S. and Europe to India, China and the South-East Asia.

Of the 14,000 business jets in operation worldwide, 11,000 were in the U.S..

There were only 400 jets in the Asia-Pacific region. But more than that number operated in Los Angeles alone. China had only 28 business jets from the Bombardier stable. India's growth potential was huge.

But it had problems of after-sales service.

To service the business jets, the buyers had to take the aircraft to Singapore and Dubai.

Now, Bombardier proposed to open a general aviation service centre in Mumbai, in partnership with a local firm.

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