Small Aircraft, Big Ambitions: China’s Aviation Journey Offers A Blueprint—And A Warning—For India

The recent US ban on supplying engines and technology to China’s Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) has dealt a significant blow to its civilian aircraft programme, exposing the vulnerabilities of relying on foreign suppliers for critical aerospace components. This development casts a sharp light on India’s own aviation landscape, where a similar dependency is stifling growth.

India’s aviation market is expanding rapidly, yet it remains constrained by a fundamental limitation. Despite the surging demand for air travel and a growing number of carriers, the country does not manufacture its own enger aircraft. Airlines eager to expand, including IndiGo’s competitors, find their plans stalled. They are unable to launch new routes or scale their operations in general, not because of a lack of demand or ambition, but because they are waiting in line for aircraft deliveries from Boeing and Airbus.

The demand for aircraft is undeniable, with Indian carriers placing massive orders. In 2023 and 2024 alone, airlines in India ordered a total of 1,359 new aircraft.

However, these planes are stuck in long international production pipelines, with deliveries stretching years into the future. As a result, both new entrants and existing players in the market are being forced to slow down their expansion plans.

In effect, the pace of India’s aviation growth is being dictated not by domestic capacity or growth potential, but by the production schedules at Boeing and Airbus assembly lines.

India’s rapidly expanding aviation market, with a constantly growing number of flyers, presents a clear opportunity to develop indigenous enger aircraft. In 2024–2025 alone, domestic air enger traffic rose by 7.8 per cent to reach 165.7 million. The scale of this growth should have already spurred meaningful progress in building a domestic aircraft manufacturing sector. Yet that growth has not materialised.

China’s Ascent

Before China began making real strides in commercial aviation over the past two decades, its early attempts were far from successful.

One of the most talked-about efforts was the Shanghai Y-10, a jetliner that looked strikingly like the Boeing 707, right down to its American-made Pratt & Whitney JT3D engines. It first took to the skies in 1980 with much fanfare, but the excitement didn’t last. Just three aircraft were built before the project faded away quietly.

With more modern Western aircraft entering the Chinese market, many began to question the logic of spending precious resources on what was essentially a 25-year-old design, retrofitted and repackaged.

China scaled back its ambitions in the years that followed but didn't stop altogether, focusing instead on more achievable projects.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, it rolled out aircraft like the Xian MA60 — a reworked version of the Antonov An-24 — and the Harbin Y-12, a 17-seat high-wing turboprop roughly in the same league as the de Havilland Twin Otter. Though hardly groundbreaking, both found a niche. They were adapted into various roles, from military and utility use to enger transport and even firefighting.

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), set up in 2008, drew on lessons from these earlier efforts as it developed the ARJ21 regional jet, a project that would eventually be rebranded as the C909. Initiated in 2002, the ARJ21 program aimed to build experience and navigate the complexities of aircraft certification.

The aircraft’s design leveraged existing technologies, featuring an airframe "heavily derived" from the McDonnell Douglas MD-80, a supercritical wing designed by Ukraine's Antonov, and General Electric CF34 engines. The ARJ21 finally entered commercial service with Chengdu Airlines in June 2016, a full 14 years after the program's inception.

Building on the ARJ21 experience, COMAC embarked on the more ambitious C919 program, a narrow-body jet designed to compete directly with the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 families. The C919 represents a significant leap, incorporating contemporary technologies, though still heavily reliant on international suppliers.

Its engines are the CFM LEAP-1C (a t venture between GE Aviation and Safran Aircraft Engines), and critical systems like avionics, flight controls, and landing gear are sourced from a host of Western giants. It's estimated that approximately three-fifths of the C919's components originate from the United States.

The first C919 was delivered in late 2022 and entered commercial service in 2023. COMAC is now focused on ramping up production, with ambitious targets to produce 50–75 units annually in the near term, eventually aiming for 200 per year to meet substantial domestic orders. Estimates indicate that China has achieved around 60 per cent localisation by cost for its C919 aircraft, partly by targeting foreign suppliers for critical technologies.

Central to both programmes was massive state backing. COMAC has received between USD 49 billion to USD 72 billion in subsidies, grants, and R&D through 2020. This comprehensive has included assured initial orders from state-owned Chinese airlines. These orders created a vital captive domestic market and an essential operational loop for product refinement.

For both the ARJ21 and C919, China's strategy skilfully incorporated international partnerships to acquire technology and expertise.

Integration of Western key system suppliers like CFM International engines and systems from GE, Honeywell, Safran, and Collins Aerospace enabled COMAC to accelerate development, reduce technical risk, and gain access to proven technologies. This also underscores the difficulty of achieving aerospace autonomy quickly and emphasises the need for international collaboration and strategic integration into global value chains.

But China’s ultimate goal was always greater self-sufficiency, even if it relied on Western sub-systems to kick-start the aerospace ecosystem.

It is investing heavily in developing indigenous alternatives, most notably the CJ-1000A engine for the C919, to eventually replace Western sub-systems. However, the CJ-1000 still depends on key imported components, including a combustion chamber and titanium alloy fan blades. As a result, full self-sufficiency for China’s commercial aviation sector remains decades away.

Unlike COMAC’s calibrated trajectory, India’s state-led efforts have been marred by delay and lack of cohesion.

Lessons for India and the Rise of Private Sector

India has historically lacked a dedicated commercial aircraft manufacturer with the scale and focus of entities like China's Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), or established Western giants such as Airbus and Boeing.

It's not that India hasn't attempted to build transport aircraft — it has, albeit somewhat half-heartedly.

The Saras light transport aircraft programme, which began in 1991 and saw its first test flight in 2004, has yet to deliver a viable design more than 30 years later.

The National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) are currently developing the Regional Transport Aircraft (RTA), a 90-seater aircraft. The design and development of the RTA are estimated to cost USD 2 billion, with the government considering the formation of Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) for its management.

NAL, which led the original Saras programme, is now working on the Saras Mk2 — a 19-seater light transport aircraft. In 2017, Rs 6,000 crore (approximately USD 710 million) was allocated for the project. Its first test flight is anticipated in December 2027, though it's anyone's guess whether it will actually take off by then.

Taking a page from COMAC’s playbook, which began by focusing on smaller regional jets to build expertise and industrial capacity, may offer a realistic roap for India. Rather than aiming for a revolutionary, all-new design, the initial goal should be to create a dependable aircraft using proven technologies and critical subsystems that can be sourced from established Western suppliers.

While such an approach won’t eliminate dependence on global players, it would begin to carve out an Indian presence in the commercial aviation space. Importantly, it would offer Indian airlines a homegrown option for launching and sustaining regional air routes.

The legacy projects that India is currently working on, although in the pipeline for years with no prominent signs of materialisation, align neatly with the requirements under UDAN to connect 625 routes across 90+ airports. Ongoing efforts to connect tier-2 and tier-3 towns under UDAN will generate a steady demand for small and regional aircraft, validating the RTA 90 and Saras Mk2 as critical feeders in India’s aviation network.

The notion of a 100 per cent indigenous modern aircraft is largely unfeasible. A pragmatic strategy involves balancing indigenous design and development efforts with strategic international sourcing and partnerships for critical systems and advanced technologies like avionics and engines. This can de-risk development and shorten timelines.

Unlike China, which would eventually want a clean break from Western design and dependence, a pragmatic step for India would be to strengthen its position in aerospace component manufacturing. With India working on multiple fighter jet aircraft of its own, and now with the establishment of the Tata-Airbus C295 military transport aircraft facility in Vadodara, there is no shortage of suppliers who can manufacture a wide variety of aerospace components in the country to feed such projects.

The C295 project alone involves the manufacturing of 13,000 detail parts with 37 Indian suppliers. While these are military projects, they're crucial for developing an aerospace ecosystem and transferable skills for enger aircraft programs.

Tata is also setting up India's first private helicopter assembly line in Karnataka's Kolar for the Airbus H125 helicopter.

This ecosystem will only grow given the significant export potential in aerospace component manufacturing. Currently, India's aerospace exports are valued under USD 2 billion, with ambitions to increase this tenfold and capture 10 per cent of the global aerospace supply chain market. Global giants like Airbus, Boeing, and Rolls-Royce are increasingly sourcing from India, attracted by cost advantages (15–25 per cent savings), skilled talent, and the need to diversify supply chains.

Rolls-Royce, for instance, plans to double its sourcing from India, and every commercial Airbus aircraft already contains Indian-made components.

India is already becoming a reliable supplier of high-quality aerospace components. This ecosystem can build expertise, gain experience, and gradually move up the value chain, with the same ecosystem then feeding Indian civilian aircraft programmes.

At the same time, India must also internalise a key lesson from China’s experience. While leveraging Western sub-systems may be essential in the short term, it must simultaneously invest in building indigenous alternatives. Otherwise, it risks facing the same vulnerability COMAC now confronts — having finally developed a reliable commercial aircraft, only to be denied access to the very foreign technologies it was built around.

Another crucial lesson India must learn from China is the importance of sustained, long-term funding for such an aircraft project.

A half-hearted effort like the Saras programme, which was allowed to drift at its own pace and effectively shelved after a prototype crash in 2009, cannot serve as a viable model going forward.

Robust state has been a cornerstone in the growth of nearly every major aircraft manufacturer in the relatively short history of global aviation.

For instance, Airbus has benefited from over USD 22 billion in subsidised European financing, which was instrumental in launching its A380 and A350 jets.

While government-led initiatives are crucial, a new private-sector entrant, LAT Aerospace, is signalling a potentially disruptive and innovative approach to bolstering India's regional air connectivity. The venture is co-founded by Surobhi Das, formerly Chief Operating Officer at Zomato, and Deepinder Goyal, Zomato's founder and CEO.

Currently operating in stealth mode, LAT Aerospace aims to develop a 24-seater enger Short Take-Off and Landing (STOL) aircraft with a planned range of up to 1,500 kilometers. The core innovation lies in the STOL capability, enabling these aircraft to operate from very short runways or “air-stops” potentially as compact as a parking lot. This dramatically reduces the reliance on extensive and costly traditional airport infrastructure.

LAT Aerospace's vision is ambitious: to “make air travel as accessible as bus journeys,” connecting underserved destinations with high-frequency, affordable flights.

By targeting intercity routes with aircraft that require minimal ground infrastructure, the startup could revolutionise regional connectivity in India, offering a nimble alternative to traditional carriers and potentially complementing the objectives of regional connectivity schemes such as UDAN.

The global aviation industry is witnessing a significant push towards electric and hybrid-electric aircraft, driven by the goals of reducing emissions and operational costs. Ventures like Electra.aero in the US are already flight-testing hybrid-electric STOL demonstrators capable of operating from very small areas with reduced fuel burn, showcasing the technological feasibility. LAT Aerospace's focus on hybrid systems aligns with this global trend.

Aircraft development is a notoriously long, capital-intensive, and complex process, involving rigorous design, extensive testing, and stringent certification phases that typically span many years. However, a focused STOL design tailored for specific regional needs could easily carve out a niche for itself.

India need not mirror China, but it cannot afford to ignore the playbook or the pitfalls.