At last week's Farnborough Air Show, an Indian carrier placed a $7.7 billion order while an additional $72 billion of contracts are in the offing. The next challenge: Finding landing and parking slots for these planes.
As air travel heats up in the world's fastest-growing major aviation market, infrastructure has failed to keep pace with traffic growth fuelled by rising incomes and affordable fares. The average time an aircraft spends circling before it can land in Mumbai during peak hours is about 45 minutes to an hour, versus 25 minutes for Singapore and zero for Qatar, according to Dubai-based Martin Consulting.
India plans to invest $5 billion to improve airport infrastructure, which is "inadequate" compared with China's proposal for $130 billion in 15 years, a June research paper by KPMG and the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India said. A proposal for a new airport in the outskirts of Mumbai has languished on the drawing board since 1997 even as Boeing estimates India needs 1,740 aircraft over the next two decades.
"We need to move fast," Sanjiv Kapoor, chief commercial officer of Vistara, a local unit of Singapore Airlines, said in an interview. "That's a huge issue. You cannot have a commercial capital and a political capital that do not have slots available for growth," he said, referring to Mumbai and New Delhi.
Out of the nation's 450 airstrips and airports, only 75 handle commercial airlines, with the rest remaining idle or rarely used because of weak demand. The lack of facilities may force carriers to defer deliveries, hurting planemakers.
Scores of airlines struggle to manage as many as 2,000 flights a day, and none of the Indian carriers, barring AirAsia's local unit, could touch the 90 per cent on-time performance, a key for low-cost models, data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation show.
The air-travel market in Asia's third-biggest economy grew 20 per cent in 2015, compared with about 10 per cent in China and less than 5 per cent in the US, according to the International Air Transport Association. Last week, AirAsia group Chief Executive Officer Tony Fernandes said he was "very, very bullish" on India.
The potential for further growth is spurring operators to scale up their fleets.
The problem is not just limited to India. There has often been a gap between intention and infrastructure delivery for Asian airport, according to a 2015 research paper by OAG Aviation Worldwide.
As much as $40 billion in investment is needed in the next 15 years to improve India's airport infrastructure, according to estimates by Sydney-based CAPA Centre for Aviation.
In an effort to attract capital, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June eased norms for foreigners, who can now fully own existing airports without government approvals.
