Aviation Sector in APAC region is growing on all verticals and it is projected that within a short time frame, India would lead all the way in this region. To explain the overall scenario, Joshua Ng,Director, Alton Aviation Consultancy from Singapore in exclusive interview with Vishal Kashyap, Managing Editor, Aviation World speaks out the various factors that could lead to achieve these milestone. He is joined by Bhavya Aggarwal,Engagement Manager at Alton Aviation. Excerpts.
What are your views on the present MRO sector and the projected growth?
JN: We do see a lot of growth in the sector as the fleet is growing and therefore the MRO is also growing.The fleet has recovered to the 2019 baseline in 2023 but then the fleet age is older, right? Because Airbus and Boeing and the aircraft programmers are not producing as many aircraft as before So airlines are forced to use older aircraft and that requires a lot more maintenance. We see MRO spending being quite strong right now and then coupled with the fact that there are new engine issues, that also helps contribute to the span in the sector.But we do expect some of this to eventually normalise. As the fleet age comes down, as the engine reliability goes up, we should probably see some tapering in the growth in the next five or ten years.
Recently, Air India has started one of the biggest retrofit programs of all its Boeing Aircraft and has set a deadline into it. How do you see this kind of initiative by one of the biggest airlines into the Asia region?
JN: We do see cabin retrofits, reconfiguration is a very big part for many of the flight carriers because they have business classes that they need to upgrade and refurbish and to compete with the other airlines that also have better products. So, for Air India’s case, it could be your likes of your Emirates or your Qatar. I think they have a plan but unfortunately that plan has been derailed by some of the supply chain issues and there’s something that they need to recover from otherwise, there’s still going to be that gap.
BA: In India, the fleet is fairly new as if we look the two major carriers, Air India is looking to renew its fleet, IndiGo has a fairly new fleet and with the large orders, the fleet is expected to almost grow to about 2-2.5x over the next 10 years. The MRO demand in India is especially expected to rise exponentially.
When you talk about the supply chain, we have seen airlines struggling into getting things managed. But do you think that what’s the market perspective on the restoration of the supply chain issue? Is that subsided or still the problem is nagging the airlines right now?
JN: The problem will continue definitely for the next at least 18-24 months, though we are seeing some signs of a recovery. If you look at aircraft production rates, to know how well Airbus, Boeing and the other OEMs are producing the aircraft, there is some stability in the rates. It’s consistent and it’s not up and down which shows there’s not a lot of volatility. I think particularly so in the Boeing supply chain, there is some weight stabilization as well which helps on the production side.
Then on the MRO side, which is where the airlines would then buy and consume parts is a bit more tricky because when you maintain aircraft, you are not trying to change everything out. It’s not a very defined bill of work so there are ups and downs in terms of which parts you need for maintenance and which parts you don’t need for maintenance. So I think the supply chain there will take a bit longer to start to get to normalisation.
With many regions enhancing their presence into the regional connectivity, the demand for mid-size aircraft like ATRs or Embraer has increased. How do you see the growth and scope for such type of carriers in today’s perspective?
JN: If you look at the order books, Airbus and Boeing on their popular products like the 737s, the 320s have a very, very long order book.If you bought an aircraft today, the earliest you’ll get an aircraft is in the 2030s. It makes it very difficult for airlines to plan to grow their network, their fleet, because there’s just no aircraft available. ATR and Embraers have a smaller order book, and therefore they will be able to deliver an aircraft much quicker.
We are potentially seeing some airlines using that as a mechanism to grow their fleet. As the narrow-body jets grow up in size, one can fill the bottom with regional jets like the Embraers, or the ATRs.
How do you see the growth in cargo sector in the APAC region?
JN: Air cargo generally grows with GDP. So if there’s trade, economic growth, then air cargo will increase proportionately with it. There’s of course going to be some ups and downs depending on other transportation modes. If you see like the Suez Canal crisis, it led to higher air cargo prices and of course higher profits for some of these cargo carriers.
BA: With the tariff, there’s obviously going to be some uncertainty in terms of how the supply chain will reorganise itself.If you talk about a specific perspective, we see that e-commerce specifically is picking up a lot in India and that’s driving a large part of the cargo growth. On the supply side, we see that there’s no real freighter carrier that is there in India.
How do you see the impact of US tariff in the aviation and aerospace sector?
JN: The fundamental thing is the tariff percentages which is changing every day, so not to comment too much about that. But I think the takeaway from all these tariffs is there’s going to be a bit more uncertainty in the market.
From an air travel perspective the people’s willingness to travel has calmed down.T he people who are willing to invest or grow their investments in aviation has also started to come down and at the end of the day there is going to be probably some reorientation in the supply chain and there we see lot of interesting deals happen.
BA : From an India perspective like we see there are very high tariffs that have been imposed on India specifically and there is also the risk of secondary tariffs being added. As aerospace manufacturing is still fairly nascent in India and the government is trying to push that but with these kind of tariffs that market could die down even before it picks up. So that is a major risk to the market.
How do you see the aviation growth in other region in comparison to India ?
JN: If you look at it from the 2017-2018 perspective, there was already the start of a China plus one strategy or decoupling between the US and China. We saw some of the companies that were quite bullish on China and put a lot of investments into China starting to think about what they need to do elsewhere in the region. So the big beneficiaries have been Southeast Asia and then now increasingly India.
India more so because the market is big, it’s growing and it’s growing very fast and so everyone wants to be there. So they see India as maybe China from 20 years ago. When you look at Southeast Asia, I think of course Singapore is one of the beneficiaries for the longest time of investments.But I think we are seeing that change a bit structurally. The cost base in Singapore is a bit higher now. So the move is towards higher value-added products rather than labour-intensive products.
So the labour-intensive products like AfroMRO have generally gone to some of the nearby neighbouring countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, where the cost of labour is a lot cheaper and you can sustain a little bit more. You can actually be more competitive if you’re out there.
Any conclusive observation?
JN: The market in APEC is certainly one of the largest in the world, it’s going to grow one of the fastest as well.It’s going to be one of the dominant regions in the world for aviation. I think the air travel, the air cargo aspects of it is quite clear with the economic growth.
We do see a lot of that demand starting to crystallise in the region and then how you actually supply this region, whether it’s from the airline perspective, the airport perspective, the MRO perspective, I think there’s a lot of investments, a lot of developments happening and I think it’s a pretty interesting, exciting place to watch.
BA: Like we see that in general there’s a lot of growth in the aviation sector in India, the companies are investing significantly, there is a strong push from the government as well on the infrastructure side and there have been movements that the government has made on the taxation side as well to improve the regulations, but I think some of the things like macroeconomic factors, like the tariffs will, may impact the industry more strongly and so I think that’s something to watch out for, for India specifically.
