American city rides on Indian aviation boom

Seattle:Central to Boeing and Seattle's revival is a booming aviation industry in Asia, particularly India and China. Last year, Air India ordered 68 Boeing planes worth a staggering $ 11.6 billion. The order breaks into 18 short-haul 737-800s for Air India Express, and eight 777-200 LRs, 15 777-300 ERs and 27 Dreamliner 787-8s for Air India, a monolith that has never ordered more than eight airplanes at a time.
"It is not only the largest single purchase in Air India's history, but the single largest order in Boeing's history as well," says Dinesh Keskar, the company vice-president for sales who is both Boeing's Mr India and India's Mr Boeing.
A graduate of Nagpur Engineering College, Keskar is singularly credited with Boeing's dominance of Indian skies. Except for Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher and Indigo, which are Airbus driven, most other airlines in India are Boeing clients.
As much as there is an anguished debate about flow of jobs to India, India is also helping the US economy in a big way, as the Seattle turnaround shows.
The relationship is fuelled not just by Boeing, but also the other local giant Microsoft, and companies such as Starbucks and Amazon.com, both of which have extensive India interest. Delegations from local counties and ports have been visiting India to drum up business.
08/07/07 Chidanand Rajghatta/Times of India

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Categories: Foreign Jul 2007