The aviation community as well as air travellers the world over remain bewildered over the mysterious disappearance nearly a month ago of a Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 operating a Boeing 777. The aircraft took off just past midnight from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 souls on board. The aircraft lost radio contact while just out of Malaysian airspace and has not been traceable since then. A multi national effort to locate the wreckage of the aircraft that is generally presumed to have been lost over the southern part of the Indian Ocean has yielded no results so far. The search however goes on. In this issue, Group Captain A.K. Sachdev, writing from Bengaluru, has covered the rather disturbing episode and has catalogued the various theories that have been put forward to explain this bizarre event.

The second and perhaps equally shocking event was closer home when on March 28 this year, a brand new C-130J Super Hercules multi-engine military transport of the Indian Air Force (IAF) procured for Special Operations was lost along with a crew of five, during a daytime training mission without even a radio call to indicate the emergency on board. Fortunately, the black box has been recovered and this may provide clues to what went wrong with the flight that it ended in a disaster. A brief report on the tragic episode has been included in this issue. Also on the military aviation front, the status of negotiations in the tender for six Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) remains unclear. As national elections are imminent, it would be reasonable to assume that the issue can be taken up for finalisation only after the next government takes over which is expected by end of May 2014.

The mega event in the recent past in the regime of civil aviation was India Aviation 2014 that was held at Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad from March 12 to 16 this year. Despite the noticeable slowdown in the Indian civil aviation industry, there was still a high degree of confidence amongst the participants in its potential. As per forecast by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and consultants KPMG, India could be the largest aviation market by 2030 and the third largest by 2020. This forecast was reinforced by the revised estimates of demand for aircraft projected by the global aerospace majors. On his part, the Minister of Civil Aviation Ajit Singh expounded plans of the government and listed the steps taken to revive and boost the civil aviation industry.

With regard to Business Aviation, China with its economy booming and the number of high net-worth individuals (HNIs) growing appears to be set to emerge as a leading global player, an assessment that is the harbinger of good news for the manufacturers of business aircraft in the world. The Asian Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition (ABACE) 2014 is being held in Shanghai, China, between April 15 and 17. This is clear indication of China’s importance and emerging status in this rapidly growing segment of the aviation industry. This issue of SP’s Aviation has a detailed coverage by R. Chandrakanth of the scope and range of developments in the regime of Business Aviation in China.

The IAF has been embarked on a modernisation aimed at complete transformation, it has been aggressively pushing for new fleets of combat aircraft moving into the fifth-generation, strategic and tactical fixed-wing airlift platforms and far more capable rotary-wing fleet both for logistic support and offensive role in the battlefield as well as a range of force multipliers. However, there has been a new thrust towards strengthening C4ISR. The new mantra for C4ISR platforms not only in the IAF but across the board in the Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard is small size, low-cost and high capability. Thus there is a shift in focus on to a new breed of business jets and turboprops that function as multi-mission ISR aircraft.

All these apart from the regular features. Welcome aboard and happy landings!