‘Not one bolt, rivet or seat manufactured…’: Entrepreneur flags the big, gaping hole in Indian aviation

Indian aviation is all about renting as it does not manufacture even a single component, said entrepreneur Ankit Sawant, CEO and co-founder of OnArrival, a ‘travel-as-a-service’ platform for players in the travel ecosystem. Sawant said no pilots are trained in India, no retrofitting is done in India, and even the galley carts are imported.

Sawant’s post comes after airports were left crippled on Tuesday, following glitches in a third-party system that slowed down check-ins.

“We don’t build a single aircraft we fly. Not one. Half our pilots train in America because we can’t even buy enough simulators – every single Level D simulator is imported. Our LCCs? IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa – all running on Amadeus-owned Navitaire,” he said, adding that all the baggage conveyor belts are German-made, the cabins are retrofitted in California, and SITA powers all the airports.

“Not one bolt, rivet, or seat manufactured in India. We’re not building an aviation industry but I hope we are just around the corner,” he said.

One user pointed out that apart from what Sawant listed, India also depends on Singapore for MRO (Maintenance Repair Overhaul).

The third-party glitch laid bare the gaping hole in Indian aviation. The issues persisted for 45 minutes before getting addressed. At least four airlines including IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa Air, and Air India Express, were affected by the outage. Airlines resorted to manual check-in and boarding procedures to manage operations.

FlightRadar24 data showed a spike in the Departure Delay Index at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport on Tuesday to reach Level 4.