US-based aircraft engine manufacturer GE is bullish that Indian airlines will order more wide bodies as the industry revives after being ravaged by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.<\/p>\n
GE engines currently power all Indian wide bodies operated by Air India and Vistara.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at mature aviation markets like China or the US which have around 4,000 aircraft, the ratio of wide bodies is around 20-25 percent. By that same parameter, India with a fleet of 700 aircraft should have around 140 wide bodies. By 2027, when we are supposed to have 1,000 aircraft, even with a conservative estimate India should have around 150-200 wide bodies. I believe the next phase of growth in India will be the wide bodies,\u201d said Vikram Rai, country head, GE Aviation.<\/p>\n
Rai said that the slot constraint at Indian airports is also going to play a role in pushing airlines to have wide bodies. \u201cAirlines will need bigger aircraft to tide over the slot constraint problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Today, every Indian airline is a customer of GE or its joint venture CFM with around 600 aircraft using the GE engines. IndiGo, India\u2019s largest airline in 2019 and 2021, signed deals for CFM LEAP-1A engines for a total of 590 A320 and A321 family aircraft.<\/p>\n
A growth in the number of wide bodies bodes well for the US aerospace giant as it manufactures the Boeing 777, 787 aircraft.<\/p>\n
All 45 wide bodies in the Indian airlines’ fleet use GE engines. \u201cWe are talking to all airlines to convince them that a wide body is the future. I believe that the airlines will choose GE as engine provider,\u201d Rai said, adding that it will grow to 2,000 plus engines. \u201cThis is more than a 3x growth in the next five years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When asked if the growth in GE\u2019s aviation business would lead to more localisation of components by the manufacturer in India, Rai said that it will ultimately depend on the volume of the business. He pointed out that the company already had multiple initiatives for research & development, manufacturing in India.<\/p>\n
GE has developed a supply chain network which feeds into the requirement of the company\u2019s business at global level.<\/p>\n
There is a multimodal factory in Pune where the company makes engine components for the GE9x engine. In partnership with the Tata group, GE also manufactures engine components for the LEAP 1A engine.<\/p>\n
GE\u2019s center at Bangalore has close to 1,000 engineers and also works on future engines which will be commercially produced from 2030.<\/p>\n
The engine manufacturer is also a key player in the global aviation industry\u2019s attempt to bring in sustainability.<\/p>\n
\u201cSustainability is our north star. The LEAP engine has a 15 per cent better fuel burn than its predecessor. The GEnX engine has a 15 per cent lower emission than its older model,” said Rai.<\/p>\n
“We have developed a foam wash program for the 787 fleet of Air India which helps in lowering emissions,\u201d Rai said.<\/p>\n
Recently IndiGo, which uses the CFM engines (developed by GE and SAFRAN), did a test flight for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US-based aircraft engine manufacturer GE is bullish that Indian airlines will order more wide bodies as the industry revives after being ravaged by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. GE engines currently power all Indian wide bodies operated by Air India and Vistara. \u201cIf you look at mature aviation markets like China or the US which have around 4,000 aircraft, the ratio of wide bodies is around 20-25 percent. By that same parameter, India with a fleet of 700 aircraft should have around 140 wide bodies. By 2027, when we are supposed to have 1,000 aircraft, even with a conservative estimate India […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-aviation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}