National Aerospace Laboratories gets seed funding for design of Regional Transport Aircraft

Bangalore: India's state-funded research agency, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has sanctioned Rs300 crore ($75 million) for its Bangalore-based aerospace lab, the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) towards the design and development of a regional transport aircraft (RTA) with the ability to ferry 90 passengers on short flights.

NAL will deploy these funds towards building a regional transport aircraft, or RTA 70, as the project is called. The initial target would be to come up with a digital concept in about two years time. Some part of the fund will also be used towards improving infrastructure at the lab.

Once additional funding for the project, as well as potential partners for the programme, are firmed up, a prototype would be built and flown in about four years. The total cost of the project is estimated at Rs2,000 crore, according to Kota Harinarayana, eminent defence scientist and Raja Ramanna fellow at NAL, who is spearheading the project.

The RTA will be a family of aircraft with three variants. The first prototype is likely to be a 70-seater, while the other two will be a 50- and 90-seater.

According to Kota Harinarayana, who is also the designer of the Tejas, light combat aircraft, the new plane will use more composites.. It will also use off-the-shelf electronic components that would be packaged for aircraft standards and embedded micro-electrical mechanical systems (Mems). These are sensors that monitor aircraft health and reduce maintenance costs.

NAL, which has built the Hansa two-seater trainer and Saras, a 14-seat passenger plane, has said it plans to collaborate with global aerospace companies as well as private sector Indian firms for the RTA programme.