Boeing Wednesday cut its commercial aircraft sales forecast for India saying it expects the country's carriers to buy up to 1,000 planes by 2029 for as much as $100 billion. The U.S. based aircraft manufacturer previously forecast India would need 1, 001 aircraft worth $105 billion by 2027. "India is economically better than the rest of the world but the aviation industry here is equally affected as companies globally," Boeing India President Dinesh Keskar said. He said last year's forecast was that large airplanes' share in the overall market would reach 11% but it now expects it to be 8%. The company now expects higher orders for small planes, so it has scaled down its forecast for India by $9 billion.
Keskar said air travel has started recovering and he expects the local aviation market to turn around in nine to 12 months. Higher operating costs, the global economic downturn and lower consumer spending has hurt air travel in India. Air passenger traffic fell about 5% in 2008. Air traffic declined 8.06% to 21.09 million passengers during the first six months of 2009. Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines and Air India have cut capacity and deferred and cancelled deliveries of new planes from Boeing and its rival Airbus due to the decline in passenger numbers. Boeing's customers in India include Jet Airways, Air India and low-fare carrier SpiceJet.
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