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India’s
largest public research agency, the Council of Scientific
and Industrial Research, or CSIR, has approved Rs300 crore
($75 million) for its Bangalore aerospace lab to design an
aeroplane that can carry 90 passengers on short flights, and
compete with planes of Franco-Italian aircraft maker ATR in
Indian skies.
National Aerospace Laboratories, or NAL, the CSIR lab
focused on civil aircraft development, is building the
regional transport aircraft, or RTA 70, as the project is
called. It would use the money to design a digital concept
plane in around two years. The money will also be used to
improve infrastructure at the lab.
Once additional funding for the Rs2,000 crore project and
its partners are firmed up, a prototype would be built and
flown in four years, said Kota Harinarayana, Raja Ramanna
fellow at NAL, who is spearheading the project.
The first prototype would be 70-seat plane. It is a family
of aircraft that NAL is designing and will have three
variants, a 70-seater, a 50-seater and an extended 90-seater
later.
India’s civil aviation industry has seen a boom in recent
years with budget carriers connecting metros and smaller
cities, prompting the world’s largest passenger aircraft
makers such as Europe’s Airbus SAS and US’ Boeing Co. to
revise their projections in the country in the next two
decades. India has 449 airfields, of which only 66 are in
use by airlines and chartered operators.
At the same time, Asian countries such as India, China,
Japan and Russia, which are investing for their aerospace
industry, are building planes to carry passengers on
short-haul routes of around 1,000km.
Russia’s state-owned Sukhoi Co., is building a Russian
regional jet, in collaboration with Boeing and European aero
engine maker Snecma. Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd
is building a family of regional jets to carry 90
passengers, which is expected to be ready for service in
2013. China expects its 90-seater ARJ-21 commercial jet,
built by China Aviation Industry Corp. to be ready by 2009.
In the next 20 years, there will be a demand for more than
5,000 planes in the 65-90-seat category, due to airlines
upgrading from 50-seat planes, and transfer from mainline
planes to regional jets due to higher fuel price and lower
passenger yield, said Mitsubishi on its website.
Currently, Brazil’s Embraer or Empresa Brasileira de
Aeronautica SA and ATR, a joint venture between Alenia
Aeronautica SpA and EADS NV, dominate the category of less
than 100-seat aircraft in the world, including India,
followed by Canada’s Bombardier Inc.
India would focus on turboprop-powered planes passengers in
short-haul routes for better fuel efficiency and passenger
comfort.
A turboprop is a gas turbine engine used to drive a
propeller in an aircraft.
“Fuel prices are not going to come down. With newer
technologies, you can make a better plane than what has been
built so far,” said Harinarayana, a former programme head of
India’s light combat aircraft Tejas. He led it from the
concept stage to flying two technology demonstrators of the
fighter.
The new plane will have more composites, he said. It will
use off-the-shelf electronic components that would be
packaged for aircraft standards and embed micro-electrical
mechanical systems (Mems), sensors that monitor aircraft
health and reduce maintenance costs.
Globally, plane makers such as Boeing are using sensors to
monitor structures in its delayed 787 plane. India has a
base for Mems under the National Programme for Smart
Materials (NPSM), a programme funded by India’s Defence
Research and Development Organisation.
Analysts say India’s civil aeroplane project would help
build its technologies and capabilities in terms of
manpower, but efforts should be made to get rid of public
sector inefficiencies that have plagued NAL’s Hansa and
Saras aircraft projects.
“There is huge opportunity for such planes. The fear is that
if you don’t build it in time, the plane would become
obsolete and you will lose the market,” said N.R. Mohanty,
chairman of the India operations of Textron Inc., the US
maker of Cessna business jets and Bell helicopters. “For
this, the private sector should be involved from scratch and
deadlines set.”
NAL, which has built the Hansa two-seater trainer and Saras,
the 14-seat passenger plane, plans to collaborate with
global plane makers and Indian private firms for the
regional plane project.
“We will involve private partners right from the concept
stage. So they will be able to market the plane better,”
said Harinarayana. He, however, did not elaborate.
“We need more investments in aerospace technologies. The
market demand is there but there is also competition from
other plane makers,” said Ajit Prabhu, co-founder and chief
executive of Quality Engineering and Software Technologies
Inc., a Bangalore firm that offers engineering services and
manufacturing components for global aerospace firms.
Source:
http://www.livemint.com/2008/04/14011140/Aerospace-lab-to-design-build.html |
