Now Sukhoi too will sell civilian aircrafts in our country. Bombardier (Canada) has been pushing its CRJs. Embraer (Brazil) is trying to get a pie as well, whereas ATR (France) dominates the medium size plane market. So what is Sukhoi’s pitch? Cost, right here:
The Brazilian Embraer costs $40 million and the Canadian Bombardier, $35 million. The Sukhoi Superjet 100 will cost $25 million.
Talk of costs took me back to this old post here, and made me think how much a mid-size plane could cost if an Indian or Chinese company were to make and sell them? A guess, $15-20 million? And you create a million jobs in the bargain!? What if India and China pooled together to make an EADS like consortium? Hold your jokes like “as if these planes will fly”, when these countries can make fighter jets, rockets, missiles and what not, won’t commercial jets be doable as well!?
Boeing says (March 2007 newsletter) that “by 2026, Asia-Pacific’s share will reach 29%”, share of new commercial plane market that is. I have read more ambitious projections for the region elsewhere.
More than that, when will the two growing countries, who as luck will have it are neighbors as well, learn to cooperate? Sometimes, I imagine an India-China free market territory where the rest of the world will have to pay an entry fee to do business. To hell with the world, let us create a wall around the two of us and then arm-twist anyone who wants to sell or manufacture inside. Okay, thats a bit too much, but I hope I conveyed my line of thinking!
Filed under: Bangalore, India, Personal, Technology |
/India/Bangalore/things 
What about the SARAS which has been in development at NAL for quite some time now? It made its debut test flight in 2004 and did all the regular circus acts at the recent Aero India 2007. I don’t know what’s holding back its commercial launch though. The likely irony is that Chandrayaan will be launched (April 2008) before SARAS.
I do not think its worth investing in an aircraft program in india – much less a indo-china jv. The news is that china is coming up with its own 100 seater commercial aircraft. Today, when the Boeing/Airbus conglomerates are derisking by offloading bigger sub systems to be manufactured by their vendors and concentrating more on design & assembly – it does not make sense to replicate it here. Our efforts have largely been a joke ( Aero show – anybody remembers the tire burst and how our aircrafts limped away) – nothing can come from our companies – we are best off offshoring some work from these biggies; The china program looks extremely ambitious and i am not sure if i would put my money on it. SB – its better to put our monies elsewhere than having these flights of fancy
Namma Nadu, saw the news today!? NAL is thinking about it. I’d say that if they want to do it, they can. You never know, the china thing might be next!