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Hyderabad: Airbus expects India’s commercial aircraft fleet of over 100 seats will grow 3X to 2,250 over the next decade. India is poised to become the third-largest civil aviation market in the world by 2035. The domestic airlines are expanding as the the Indian aviation market is booming and the Indian airlines’ are ambitious to expand on international routes.

Jürgen Westermeier, President and Managing Director, Airbus India and South Asia, adddressed the media on the sidelines of Wings India 2026, and said the first Indian originally made and assembled Airbus C-295, a twin-engine medium military transport aircraft, will be delivered in the third quarter of 2026.

The Airbus official informed that his company has a backlog of 1,250 aircraft from Indian carriers and expects to deliver on an average 120-150 planes every year.

“And we are expecting a compound growth of (passenger traffic) around 8.9 per cent in the next 10 years. How do we see the infrastructure? How do we see the aviation system which will support this growth? We are expecting around 200 airports in 10 years, so another 50 airports more. We will see a tripling of the fleet. So we will have around 2,250 aircraft in service in 10 years,” Westermeier said.

Another positive factor is that the growing fleet of airlines also creates more capacity for freight as the annual cargo capacity of Indian carriers will be bigger than 5,000 kilo tonne (five million tonne).

“Also, we can clearly say that with 850 aircraft today, India is still a nascent market, and with numbers, trips per capita (at) 0.13, compared to other similar regions, still very low. So, a lot of opportunity for growth, and a lot of opportunity for the people of India to utilize aviation as a means of transport,” he said.

The Airbus official said at present India has 150 airports and is expected to add 50 more airports in the next 10 years. He further said that with more planes entering the Indain aviation sector, the requirement of pilots would surge to 35,000 by 2035.