Message from President, BAOA

India has been credited repeatedly with holding one of the largest pool of technical manpower over the last few decades. Yet it is surprising that in the field of aviation, India has been lagging far behind in setting up MRO facilities for aircraft, aircraft engines, components and accessories, as compared to very small countries such as Israel and Singapore, just to name only two among a host of other small countries situated in our contiguous region viz the Middle-East & the Far-East. It needs to be specially mentioned that both India & Israel attained independence way back in the same year (1947). Israel’s geographical area equals only that of one of the smaller Indian states, yet undoubtedly it has attained the status of a world leader in setting up MRO facilities for both large aircraft used by scheduled airlines as well as for small aircraft used by both scheduled airlines as well as the charter world. Comparatively, India, even after more than 75 years of attaining independence, constantly overlooked this basic infrastructural need for reducing cost of operations of both scheduled airlines as well as of the charter aircraft. It also resulted in constant drain of our foreign exchange resources over the same number of years to those countries which actively supported development of overhaul facilities for civil aircraft, engines & components as an integrated part of their planning, with a view to provide requisite support to their national civil aircraft operations industry. A bulk of our fleet of aircraft are still heavily dependent on foreign soils for overhaul of aircraft or overhaul exchange of engines, components & accessories, resulting in idle aircraft assets for the time-being. This, while the fixed costs (eg pilots’ salaries, salaries of maintenance & other support staff, rentals, insurance etc) continue to be incurred by the scheduled operator/charter company without any parallel income over that time. An in-country MRO facility would considerably reduce the down-time of aircraft resulting in more productive aircraft assets. The relevant question that needs to be asked is: How come a number of smaller countries with their proportionately lesser resources could do it, while India, in the more than past seven to eight decades, remained stagnant, to a smaller or greater extent, on building up this type of infrastructure so critical to the basic operations of the aviation industry?

What is even more surprising is that the larger scheduled operators continue to place orders year after year for hundreds of foreign-origin aircraft without, by & large, either their owners/management or the powers permitting such imports (running into billions of dollars!) insisting with the OEMs that parallel MRO facilities be set up on the Indian soil! An example needs to be taken from the Defence Procurement Policy that makes 30 per cent “Offset" as a mandatory requirement for such imports. Perhaps it is time that the Government of India/ Ministry of Civil Aviation seriously consider introducing such a clause in the future before permitting import of large consignments of civil aircraft, engines, components & accessories from foreign countries into India. There is no reason why the OEMs will not agree to the offset clause if the bulk order runs into millions/billions of dollars! Hopefully, under the offset clause, the OEM would have the option of investing in India (to a lesser or greater extent) even for setting up MRO facilities for the aircraft/engines/components/accessories of the hapless small charter world operators also. It needs to be brought out here that individually a charter operator can normally place purchase order for only one aircraft/engine (etc) at a time & thus does not have the necessary muscle to arm twist the OEM to invest in setting up such MRO facilities. Through an offset clause for large fleet operators, the Government can thus help the small charter operators also see some MRO facilities gradually coming up in the country.

My Best Regards to all.

AVM S.S. Chauhan (Retd)
PVSM AVSM VSM
President, BAOA.