Pilots Blog

A $2,000 car is an enduring argument for business aviation

We'd been sitting in the dense Delhi traffic for nearly two hours when my host turned to me and said "I wonder what it will be like when Tata is manufacturing 500 of it's $2,000 cars a week?" - pretty scary, I thought! My mind went back to Stefan Vilner speaking at MIU's conference in September on light jets, when he declared that "it was efficiency and opportunity for doing business.....the elusive quality of time....that was the fundamental reason for using private aviation". If ever there was a convincing argument for business aviation, the thought of tens of millions more cars on the roads of India was a compelling one. As if to underline the point the following morning's business papers revealed industrial output was up by over 9% - India's traffic might be standing still but its economy is not. The developed world might have burdened future generations with trillions of dollars worth of debt and be torturing itself over fiscal policy but the emerging economies are not hanging around. GDP in India is expected to grow by 6.5% in 2009/10 and there will be new members of the millionaire's club - they want to get around this vast country in quick time and business aviation will be a vital part of that process.  

The Indian Business Aviation Expo (IBAE) takes place 24/25 February, 2010 in New Delhi:

http://www.miuevents.com/ibae-10