Israeli major, IAI, mulls manufacture of regional and business jets in India

Hyderabad: Israeli aerospace and armaments major, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Limited, may be mulling manufacture of a 60/80-seater passenger aircraft as well as different types of executive jets, according to media reports.

According to these reports, the IAI would like to build most of the aircraft in India, while retaining the designing part with itself. Reports quote Nissan as saying that talks were on with a likely Indian partner.

According to IAI development and production of state-of-the-art business-jet aircraft has been a prominent activity for the company for more than three decades, over which period of time it has produced more than 800 such aircraft.

The main brand lines produced so far have been G200 (formerly Galaxy) intercontinental super-mid-size, G150 and G100 (formerly Astra SPX) mid-size business-jets and the previously manufactured Astra and Westwind series, their derivatives and mission-based configurations.

Apart from producing business jets, Nissan has also said that IAI has firmed up proposals to set up software and aeronautical engineering companies in Bangalore for undertaking research and development activities in military and civil aviation sectors, and that these new entities should be in place sometime this year. The proposal to set these up was currently awaiting approval from the IAI board. The companies would be fully owned by IAI.

Nissan also said that his company was planning an MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) facility for converting phased-out passenger aircraft into cargo planes.