At the 50th Paris Air Show the big noise is being made by the two largest civil aircraft manufacturers — Airbus and Boeing. Yet, Canadian transportation hardware company, Bombardier, which makes everything from Delhi Metro coaches to small aircraft, is the one really bullish about India.
Bombardier’s Vice-President of Sales, Asia-Pacific, Torbjorn Karlsson believes that the market for aircraft in the 20-149 seat category in India over the next two decades is around 650 aircraft. Bombardier delivered 15 of their Q-400 turboprop aircraft to SpiceJet recently, and the low-cost carrier has been very satisfied with the planes.
“SpiceJet did not buy the Q-400 to meet their route obligations that the Indian Government imposes on airlines. They realised that they can actually make a profit on routes that demand smaller planes”, Karlsson told this reporter at a briefing in Paris recently. In fact, SpiceJet’s Chief Executive Officer, Neil Mills has been praising the Q-400 in recent interviews and the airline still has 15 more similar planes on option with the Canadian firm, although Karlsson did not disclose if the airline is going to firm up the order.
In addition, Bombardier Aerospace which makes the CRJ series of 70-100 seat planes which are operated in limited numbers by Air India Regional believes that these small jets can also be used on shorter routes, instead of bigger aircraft. “What passengers are really looking for is not one or two flights a day, but multiple flights a day”, Karlsson said. In addition, such planes can be used to open up new routes, particularly cross-border routes from India to Dhaka, Columbo and kathmandu.
But Karlsson is really the most excited about his soon to fly CS (C-Series) planes. The CS100 and CS300 is the first clean-sheet narrow-body design in over 25 years and will seat between 120-150 passengers. This is currently a market served by smaller versions of of Airbus’ A320 and Boeing’s 737 aircraft. “Because we have built this plane from the ground up, we are a lot lighter than our competition. Almost 5000kgs lighter. In our industry, less weight equals more money”, Karlsson pointed out.
In addition, the aircraft, a mock-up of which was at the Bombardier chalet, has a 5-abreast seating layout which Karlsson claims is “less cramped”, and the middle seat in the row of three seats is wider, “which will make the dreaded middle seat experience better”, has bigger windows than the competition as well as bigger toilets. “It is a superior experience for the passenger”, Karlsson pointed out.
“In India such planes can serve longer routes with less demand, say from lucknow to Bangalore or even open up small cities to direct service from cities like Delhi, like smaller cities in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In India there is a gap between aircraft such as the Q-400 and ATR-72 till the A320 or 737, SpiceJet, for example has no aircraft between 78 seats and 189 seats, I believe there is a huge oppurtunity waiting to be tapped here”, Karlsson said.
Bombardier Aerospace is in talks with most carriers, and Karlsson expects some good news on the orders front sooner rather than later. The first Bombardier CS aircraft is expected to fly within a few weeks and deliveries are expected to start in the second-half of 2014.