Airbus planning to house its innovation cell in Bangalore

To source $1b worth equipment from India

Global aircraft manufacturer Airbus aims to source $1 billion worth of equipment and services from its Indian entities by 2020, said Kiran Rao, Executive Vice-President, Sales and Marketing and Customer Affairs, Airbus, on Friday. The company, which already sources software and engineering services from its facility in Bangalore, is setting up an innovation cell, which will be operational by the end of the year, Dr. Rao toldThe Hindu.

“This will not be an engineering centre, but will work with other Airbus units to develop new designs and concepts,” Dr. Rao said. “With the aviation market moving from the Western Hemisphere to the East, concepts of aircraft design should be coming from the East,” he said. “We have decided that our think tank for determining how aeroplanes should be, and how they should interact with airports and passengers and how pilots should interact with the craft would be headquartered in Bangalore and be headed by an Indian,” he said.

Airbus’ pilot training centre in Noida would be operational by 2013, Dr. Rao said. The facility would have the “capability” to train 5,000 pilots annually, but it would start operating only three simulator bays for training initially. The facility can provide initial and recurrent training, and jet orientation training.

Dr. Rao said 200 Airbus aircraft were already flying in India; 400 more were due for delivery, most of them by 2020. About 90 per cent of these would be A-320s, Dr. Rao added. Deliveries of four A-330s for Jet Airways, which were deployed on long-haul flights, would commence in October, he said.

India, Dr. Rao said, was the company’s fourth most important market, after China, the U.S. and the U.K. Indian commercial airliners were likely to purchase 1,043 aircraft over the next 20 years, he added. “Last year, we sold more than 270 aircraft to Indian airline companies, about 50 per cent of all aircraft sold by us worldwide.”

Dr. Rao attributed the problems of the Indian airlines to the high cost of fuel and user fees at Indian airports. “Delhi is, perhaps, the second most expensive airport in the world for airline companies,” he observed. “It is a fine airport, but it is not paved with gold,” he quipped.

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