Third and crucial era of aviation

Winds of change are blowing through the corridors of India’s aviation industry. More and more people are taking to the skies as the preferred mode of mobility and transport. 

With industry consolidation and restructuring, the focus is clearly on financial profitability. As customers become more discerning, attention is on comfort, environment and safety, while not losing sight of cost efficiencies.

Policymakers have set the target of scaling Indian air travel to one billion passengers a year in 15-20 years - nearly four times the 265 million recorded in 2016-17. Airbus and Boeing have forecasted a demand for over 2,400 new aircraft valued at $480 billion over the next 20 years. 

The two-year-old Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (UDAN) scheme of regional connectivity is set to receive a leg up. The government is promoting regional connectivity and inclusive flying, while also opening up the rights to overseas flying for domestic airlines. 

Given the efficiencies they offer, the induction of wide-body aircraft may be a key strategy for consideration in the next phase of Indian aviation. 

As the industry moves to gear up for the UDAN vision, the government is making efforts towards decongesting airports and moving towards privatisation of smaller airports. This work is already on at six small airports in the country.  Bidding for subsidised regional air routes earlier this year resulted in 11 airlines winning bids to ply 235 regional routes with 6.9 million seats already added on an annual basis to meet the growing demand. 

Given this landscape, airline companies are looking at new aircraft acquisitions and mature transitions from existing aircraft models to wide-bodies. These are made available through a variety of choices to manufacturers and leasing companies. 

New aircraft deployment has to have a healthy mix of wide-body aircraft that can free up a substantial chunk of narrow-body fleets, which can then be used successfully on newly-opened regional routes.  In addition, wide-body aircraft offer better customer experience through value-added services and more deck space for airlines to implement in-cabin features – something that is becoming a deciding factor in passengers’ airline choices. 

Today, India has predominantly narrow-body aircraft. Combine that with the national priority of regional connectivity with smaller airports, airlines need to rework their business models to achieve financial growth and sustainability. The ability to carry higher passenger volumes with wide-body aircraft allows players to easily connect the increasing number of regional aviation networks and hubs. 

Further, most low-cost domestic carriers are looking at a hub-and-spoke model where their turboprops and single-aisle planes get traffic into their metro hubs from where their wide-body planes offer connectivity to destinations that are eight to nine hours away. In this backdrop, wide-bodies on domestic routes can be a high-yield option for airlines, providing carriers more revenue per available seat mile. They also offer a significant advantage at airports with restricted infrastructure usage, enabling airlines to carry more passengers to airports with limited slots. A competitive environment demands that operating costs be kept low. Low operating costs bring down ticket rates, attracting more passengers. 

Improved fuel-efficiency not only reduces costs for airlines, and thus passengers, but also contributes significantly to reducing the aerospace industry’s environmental footprint.  China has successfully used the wide-body operating model for domestic travel, and these airlines are seeing cost benefits as well as efficiency in catering to an ever-increasing base of air travellers, quite similar to India. 

There is immense potential for lower weight variants of wide-body aircraft optimised for use on domestic and regional routes in high-growth markets with large populations and concentrated traffic flows such as India and China. 

In addition, as airlines in India expand their offerings to ply more international routes in tandem with the growing demand from Indians increasingly choosing to travel abroad, the benefits of wide-body aircraft is unparalleled. As demand for air travel in India increases, the industry should focus on being able to grow in the most sustainable and efficient way. 

While the government can play its part in supporting the aviation ecosystem, it has to go hand in hand with improvements in operational efficiencies, such as minimising empty seats, reducing cabin weights etc., as well as investing in more fuel-efficient aircraft to balance growth with environmental commitments.

Decades of technological advancements have made aircraft engines more fuel-efficient, at a rate of about 1% per year, and this is expected to continue. Any savings in fuel cost reduces operational cost as well as carbon emissions. 

Globally, aviation is at the dawn of its third major era, building on the foundation laid by the Wright brothers and the innovators of the Jet Age in the 1950s. Aviation’s third era is enabled by advances in new architectures, advanced engine thermodynamic efficiencies, electric and hybrid-electric propulsion, digitisation, artificial intelligence, materials and manufacturing.

Larger and wider aircraft will begin to benefit from novel designs that will further improve efficiency through management of aircraft drag and distributing propulsion in new ways. 

Indian aviation is also at the cusp of a new era. The first phase was led by the public sector airlines, Air India and Indian Airlines. The next phase saw the open sky era from the early 1990s when the private sector made its presence felt in Indian skies. The current era is seeing a focus on consolidation, innovation, customer comfort, sustainability and responsible flying, and rightly so.  

The Author is President, Rolls-Royce, India & South Asia