NAL, which is a constituent of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), is in the process of getting the aircraft certified in Australia where the demand for small aircraft is quite huge, NAL director A R Upadhya said.
NAL has already applied to Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) to obtain the certification, and is expecting to obtain the certification by the end of September this year.
"We are in the process of getting an Australian flight certification for Hansa. We have furnished most of the documents they sought for the evaluation. They may visit our facility once, and their pilot will probably fly the aircraft before issuing the certification," Upadhya told Business Standard.
Hansa, which made its first flight in May 1999, has been certified by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). However, in the absence of a bilateral agreement with Australia, the DGCA certification will not be valid in that country, according to NAL.
In Australia, NAL has already tied up with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's Sir Lawrence Wackett Centre for Aerospace Design Technology to popularise the aircraft.
Meanwhile, NAL has parted ways with Taneja Aerospace and Aviation Limited (TAAL) who were supposed to manufacture and market the aircraft, citing various reasons including the quality of the works.
"We were hoping that TAAL will manufacture Hansa, and in fact they had shown interest for this earlier. We asked them to make two aircraft. It has not come out very well. And they are also not interested in getting a full-fledged agent by being a marketing agency," added Upadhya.
Now NAL is manufacturing the aircraft on its own, even though the research organisation does not want to become a production agency. So far NAL has sold 12 aircraft to various agencies including two to the Chennai Flying Club. Each Hansa aircraft costs about Rs 50 lakh. NAL expects this to be a very good revenue generator once they get permission to sell in Australia.
NAL's annual budget in fiscal 2007-08 was Rs 120 crore of which about 60 per cent came from CSIR and the rest from external sources including various sponsored projects.
