Predicting robust growth in the India civil aviation sector European aerospace major Airbus on Thursday said the country would require passenger and freight aircraft, valued at $105 billion, to serve the strong demand by 2025.
According to the latest Airbus global market forecast India will become the fastest growing country for air travel demand for the next decade.
"Strong demand in India is being unleashed by air transport deregulation, the emergence of number of new operators, low fares and large untapped demand for air travel," Airbus COO (customers) John Leahy said in New Delhi.
According to the forecast India will require 1,100 passenger and freight aircrafts by 2025, of which 935 will be passenger aircraft while the remaining 165 will be freighters.
The number of passenger aircraft will increase five-fold from 190 aircrafts in service at the end of 2005.
The freight fleet is poised to increase almost 20-fold to meet the potentially large untapped market from eight freighter aircrafts in service in 2005 to 165 in 2025.
Airbus's global market forecast also predicted that India will have an average annual passenger traffic growth of 7.7 per cent until 2025, well above the world average of 4.8 per cent and China's 7.2 per cent.
Earlier, US major Boeing, a competitor of Airbus had predicted similar growth in Indian aircraft demand, expecting the defence market to grow to $10-15 billion.