Flight Friday: Is India Finally Realizing Its Potential?

This week, Flight Friday looks at Indian operators and their narrowbody jets.

India, for quite a while now, has been a country of so much potential. With a growing population, a growing “middle class,” a huge country to cover, and ground infrastructure that needs some updating, the ingredients are there for India to grow. However, it hasn’t.

All that began to change in June 2023, when Air India Express ordered 50+ Boeing MAX aircraft, Air India ordered 400+ aircraft split between Boeing and Airbus narrowbody and widebody, and not to be outdone, IndiGo placed an order for 500 Airbus A320neo-family aircraft.

To cap off the year, Akasa Air then placed an order for 150 MAXs. 2023 was a breathtaking year for Indian orders, ultimately leading to India accounting for almost 30% of all narrowbody and widebody orders in 2023.

A large orderbook does not yet equate to a huge fleet. The fleet has grown, with a little under 150 more aircraft in the commercial fleet today than at the end of 2019, but the fleet will continue to grow with still a large backlog.

Narrowbody utilization, when compared to the equivalent month in 2019, went above the 100% mark in April 2022. However, India was the first country to feel the impact of the Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan (GTF) durability issues during summer 2022, which led to a relative drop in utilization.

The impact of the durability issue kicked in during July 2023, once Pratt announced the issues related to the GTF, which began a plateauing of the narrowbody utilization compared to 2019.

GTF “ground days” (note that “ground days” could be for any reason, maintenance, AOG, regular operations) seemed to have peaked in summer 2024 at around 67%, and have slowly declined to 63%, which is a step in the right direction, showing that aircraft are flying a little more. As Pratt works through the issues and applies fixes to the engines, this number should continue to decline at a slow but steady rate.

This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization database.