BS READS: Plane X, the first desi civilian aircraft India could never build

The idea was to build 70- and 90-seater versions of an indigenous civilian aircraft that would be sold not just in India but across the world

In the first part of this report, Business Standard looked at how India’s plan to develop an indigenous civilian aircraft died a silent death. But nothing is known so far about the ideas that went into conceptualising the aircraft. The plan was to avoid duplication, work on core technical competency of India’s aerospace industry, and produce the first ‘Made in India’ aircraft in the shortest possible time.

The plane on paper

A high-powered committee, chaired by G Madhavan Nair, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), and comprising various scientists and industrialists like Arun Firodia, was constituted in