Chapter 245: Wings of Commerce
The announcement that Shergill Aerospace was entering the civil aviation market had been, in the estimation of most people who followed the Indian aerospace industry, either an inevitable extension of the company's logic or a category error of spectacular proportions, depending on which side of the argument you happened to occupy on the morning of the fourteenth of October, 1976.
The people who thought it was inevitable had a straightforward case. Shergill Aerospace's civil division had existed, in various organisational forms, since 1972, when the company had established a dedicated team under the quiet, precise leadership of a man named Jagannathan Krishnamurti who had spent fifteen years at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited learning which aspects of Indian aerospace development were constrained by institutional conservatism and which were constrained by genuine technical limitation, and who had concluded that the two categories were almost entirely disjoint. The technical constraints were real but bounded. The institutional conservatism was systematic and, given sufficient resources applied with sufficient patience, addressable. He had joined Shergill Aerospace at the age of forty-two because the resources were clearly present. He had spent four years discovering whether the patience was also present, and had concluded that it was.
The people who thought it was a category error had an equally straightforward case. Military aircraft were one thing — the IAF was a captive customer operating in an environment where performance was the primary metric and cost was secondary, and where the government's willingness to fund indigenous development was connected to strategic considerations that civilian aviation did not share. Civil aviation was a different market, with different dynamics, different customers, different regulatory environments, and the brutal arithmetic of commercial economics applied to every design decision. You could build an extraordinary fighter jet and sell forty-eight of them to one customer and call it a programme success. You could build an extraordinary commercial aircraft and discover, three years after it entered service, that a specific maintenance issue was adding twelve hours to each scheduled C-check and that twelve hours multiplied across an operator's entire fleet across an entire year added up to a number that made the aircraft unmarketable at any price point that covered the manufacturer's costs.
Krishnamurti had known this. He had spent four years ensuring that the civil division's approach to every design decision was shaped by this knowledge.
The result was three aircraft: the Type 60 Saras, the Type 90 Samudra, and the Type 120 Himalaya. And a product launch event at the Indira Gandhi International Airport's new terminal — the airport was still Palam to most Delhiites but the official name had changed with the terminal — that had been organised with a precision that reflected the civil division's understanding that a product launch was, itself, a product, and that the product it had to sell first was credibility.
The room in which the launch event took place was the terminal's international arrivals hall, which had been closed to regular traffic for eighteen hours preceding the event and which had been transformed, by a logistics team that had been working for three weeks, into something between an exhibition space and a concert hall. Along the eastern wall, three scale models occupied three separate plinths: the Type 60 at one-fifteenth scale, the Type 90 at one-twentieth scale, and the Type 120 at one-twenty-fifth scale, each model built to an accuracy that had required six months of specialist model-making work and that, when viewed from the correct distance, had the quality of actual aircraft that had been reduced in size by a process of careful compression rather than built up from parts. The fuselage cross-sections were cut away on the display side to show the cabin arrangements. The engines were cut away to show the Sadhak-Max turbofan's architecture. The avionics bays were open.
There were one hundred and forty-seven people in the room at nine in the morning. Seventy-one of them were press — Indian aviation journalists, the Times of India's aviation correspondent, the Economic Times, a correspondent from Flight International who had flown in from London specifically for the event, two writers from Aviation Week and Space Technology who had been in India for a week on a broader story about the Indian aerospace industry's development and who had adjusted their itinerary when they heard about the launch, and a small team from Jane's who were present because they were present at everything in the aerospace world that might produce information worth cataloguing. The remaining seventy-six were industry figures, airline representatives, government officials, and a group of senior IAF officers who were present because Shergill Aerospace's military and civil divisions shared significant engineering infrastructure and because what the civil division was demonstrating today about engine technology and systems integration was directly relevant to the military programme's next phase.
Seated in the front row, in chairs that had been arranged in a curve facing the three models and the low stage between them, were the people whose presence at the launch had required the most active management: the Director General of Civil Aviation, the Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Chairman of Indian Airlines, the Chairman of Air India — and, having flown in the previous evening from Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Jakarta respectively, the representatives of Malaysia Airlines System, Singapore Airlines, and Garuda Indonesia.
The Malaysian representative was Dato' Hamid bin Tunku Azman, fifty-three, Deputy Managing Director of Malaysia Airlines System, who had been invited to the launch through a channel that had involved several months of quiet relationship-building by Shergill Aerospace's commercial development team and who had come to Delhi with the specific scepticism of a man who has seen many product launches and has learned to calibrate his reaction to the gap between what is promised at a launch and what is delivered eighteen months later.
The Singapore representative was Lim Boon Keng, forty-seven, Singapore Airlines' Head of Fleet Planning, who had been in civil aviation for twenty-two years and who operated from a position of institutional confidence that reflected Singapore Airlines' genuine competitive standing in the regional market and who therefore did not need to perform scepticism — he simply had it, as a professional condition.
The Garuda Indonesia representative was Ir. Bambang Suryatno, fifty-one, a career civil servant who had moved from the Ministry of Transport into Garuda's fleet management office in 1968 and who had navigated, in the eight years since, the specific dynamics of an Indonesian state airline that served a country of thirteen thousand islands and needed aircraft that could do what the Boeing 737 could do in terms of short-field performance while also doing what the Boeing 707 could do in terms of range to reach the more distant islands, and which rarely found that any single aircraft satisfied both requirements simultaneously.
Krishnamurti was on the stage with a thin folder in his hand that he did not open during the presentation because he had not needed to open it in the four rehearsal sessions the team had conducted, and because he understood that a man who has to read from a folder during a product presentation is a man who does not completely know his product, and he completely knew his product.
He was fifty-six years old, grey-haired, slight, with the specific quality of a person who has spent most of their professional life thinking about how things work and has therefore developed the habit of precision not as a style but as the natural consequence of caring about accuracy. He spoke without decoration. He spoke about aircraft the way aircraft deserved to be spoken about — in terms of what they could do that other aircraft could not, and why the things they could do were things that the people in this room needed their aircraft to be able to do.
He began with the engine.
"The Sadhak-Max Ultra-High Bypass turbofan," Krishnamurti said, "is the foundation on which all three aircraft are built, and it is where the civil programme's technological position is most clearly different from anything currently available from any other manufacturer." He walked to the engine cross-section mounted on a separate display stand at the left side of the stage. "I want to be specific about what 'ultra-high bypass' means in this context, because the term is used loosely in the industry and I want you to understand precisely what we mean by it."
He pointed to the fan section. "The conventional turbofan engines currently powering the Boeing 707, the Douglas DC-8, the early widebody aircraft — the Pratt and Whitney JT8D, the JT9D, the General Electric CF6 — have bypass ratios ranging from approximately one-to-one to five-to-one. That is the ratio of the air that bypasses the core combustion section to the air that goes through it. A higher bypass ratio means more of the thrust is produced by the large fan at the front accelerating a large mass of air slowly, which is significantly more efficient than the turbojet approach of accelerating a small mass of air very quickly." He paused. "The JT9D, which powers the new Boeing 747, achieves a bypass ratio of approximately five-to-one. The Sadhak-Max achieves a bypass ratio of eight-point-two to one."
He let this sit for a moment.
"The practical consequence of an eight-point-two-to-one bypass ratio, at the thrust levels we are producing for the Type 90 and the Type 120, is a specific fuel consumption that is between eighteen and twenty-two percent better than the JT9D at cruise conditions. This is not a marginal efficiency improvement. This is a structural cost advantage that goes directly to the operating economics of every airline that flies these aircraft." He looked at the front row. "An airline that replaces a long-haul fleet of Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-8s with the Type 90 Samudra or the Type 120 Himalaya reduces its fuel bill by roughly one-fifth, all other things being equal. Fuel is approximately thirty-five percent of an airline's operating cost in current market conditions. Reducing fuel consumption by one-fifth reduces total operating cost by approximately seven percent." He paused. "Seven percent in a business with margins of two to four percent is not an efficiency gain. It is a transformative competitive advantage."
Lim Boon Keng was writing in a notebook.
Dato' Hamid had stopped performing his professional scepticism and was listening.
Ir. Suryatno was looking at the engine cross-section with an expression that contained something that was not quite excitement but was in the same family.
"I will address the fuel efficiency data in detail in the technical package that each of you will receive at the end of this session," Krishnamurti said. "For the purposes of this presentation, I want to move through the three aircraft and then return to the economics, because the economics only make sense in the context of what each aircraft can actually do."
He began with the Type 60 Saras.
"The Saras is a narrow-body regional airliner designed for routes between one hundred and three thousand kilometres, operating from airports with runway lengths as short as one thousand six hundred metres, carrying between eighty-six and one hundred passengers depending on configuration." He walked to the model. "The cross-section shows a six-abreast seating arrangement in economy class — three and three, with an aisle. This is the same cross-section as the Boeing 737, with a fuselage external diameter approximately four centimetres wider, which allows an economy class seat width of seventeen and a half inches compared to the 737's sixteen and a half. One inch per seat. This sounds small. It is not small. In an aircraft that carries ninety passengers on a two-hour regional route, the difference between sixteen-and-a-half-inch and seventeen-and-a-half-inch seats is the difference between a passenger who arrives at their destination having had an acceptable experience and a passenger who arrives irritable."
This produced a small amount of laughter from the aviation journalists in the room, which was not what Krishnamurti had intended but which he did not discourage.
"The Saras is powered by two Sadhak-Max Regional turbofans — a scaled version of the main Sadhak-Max family, developed specifically for the regional-category thrust requirement, producing approximately seventy kilonewtons per engine at sea level standard conditions. This gives the Saras a payload-range capability of one hundred passengers for two thousand eight hundred kilometres with reserves, which encompasses every significant regional route in the Indian domestic network and most of the intra-ASEAN routes that I suspect are of interest to our guests from Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia."
He turned to the seating cross-section display. "I want to spend a moment on the interior, because this is an area where the Saras is significantly different from the 737, and I want those differences to be specific rather than impressionistic." He pointed to the overhead bin cross-section. "The Saras overhead bin volume is forty-three cubic inches per seat, compared to the Boeing 737's twenty-eight cubic inches per seat. This is a consequence of the slightly wider fuselage cross-section and a revised bin geometry that our industrial design team spent eight months developing. The practical consequence is that the majority of passengers can stow a standard carry-on bag in the overhead rather than checking it, which reduces ground handling load and turnaround time."
He pointed to the floor structure diagram. "The Saras cargo hold uses a standard container that is identical to the LD3 container used in the wide-body aircraft in our fleet. Every airline that operates the Type 90 or the Type 120 alongside the Saras has a standardised cargo container across its fleet. Ground handling equipment, container inventory, loading procedures — all standardised." He paused. "This sounds like a logistics detail. It is, in practice, a significant operational cost reduction for an airline that operates a mixed fleet."
"The Saras avionics are worth addressing separately," he said. "The aircraft has a three-man flight deck — captain, first officer, flight engineer — which is standard for this class. The flight management system uses the ISMC-developed 3-micron chip navigation computer, which we call the Sadhak Navigation Computer Type One. The SNC-1 integrates inertial navigation, VOR/DME, and ILS approach guidance in a single unit that weighs eleven kilograms less than the equivalent function split across separate units in the Boeing 737-200's avionics architecture. The weight saving is not the primary benefit. The primary benefit is that the flight crew has a single display for navigation status rather than cross-referencing three separate instruments, which reduces workload and reduces the class of error that comes from mis-reading the interaction between separate instruments."
"Is there autopilot integration?" Lim Boon Keng asked from the front row.
"Yes. The Saras autopilot interfaces directly with the SNC-1, which means the autopilot is using the same navigation solution as the pilots' displays rather than a separate navigation input. There is no possibility of the autopilot executing a manoeuvre based on a navigation solution different from what the crew is seeing. In current generation aircraft, the autopilot and the navigation display frequently use separate inputs, which is the source of a specific category of autopilot-related incidents that have appeared in accident investigation reports over the past fifteen years." He paused. "We designed the integration specifically to eliminate that failure mode."
Flight International's correspondent was writing very fast.
The Type 90 Samudra was a different order of aircraft.
Krishnamurti addressed it with a shift in register that the room noticed, because the Saras had been presented with the measured precision of a man describing something he was proud of and knew well, and the Samudra was presented with something that approached, in the flicker between precision and feeling, genuine attachment.
"The Samudra," he said, "is what the Indian subcontinent's long-haul routes actually need, rather than what the available aircraft approximately provide." He walked to the model. "Two hundred and twenty passengers in a standard two-class configuration. Two Sadhak-Max Ultra-High Bypass engines — the full-scale version, each producing one hundred and ninety kilonewtons at sea level standard. Range with full payload: twelve thousand kilometres. Range with maximum fuel and reduced payload: fifteen thousand kilometres."
He looked at the front row. "I want to place those numbers in context. The longest route currently operated by Air India is the Bombay-London service, at approximately seven thousand two hundred kilometres. The Delhi-Singapore route is approximately four thousand two hundred kilometres. The Delhi-Tokyo route is approximately five thousand eight hundred kilometres." He paused. "The Samudra can fly any of these routes non-stop with a full payload. The Boeing 707-320C, which is the long-range variant currently in Air India's fleet, has a range of approximately nine thousand five hundred kilometres with full payload, which means it can fly most of these routes non-stop but is operating near its range limit on the longer services, with consequences for payload flexibility and operational reserve." He paused again. "The Samudra has a fifty percent range advantage over the 707-320C and burns twenty percent less fuel per passenger-kilometre. These two facts together describe an aircraft that is more capable and cheaper to operate than anything currently in service in any fleet anywhere in the world."
He said this without emphasis. Not as a promotional claim — as a fact he had spent four years making true and was now stating because it was true.
"The wide-body fuselage," he continued, pointing to the cross-section. "The Samudra is a genuine wide-body — twin-aisle, eight abreast in economy, two-four-two configuration, with an aisle width of twenty inches on each side. Compare this to the Boeing 747's ten-abreast economy configuration in most airline installations, which achieves higher passenger density at the cost of a middle seat that every passenger who has sat in a middle seat on a ten-abreast wide-body aircraft has their own opinion about." He looked up from the model. "The Samudra's eight-abreast economy configuration means no passenger is more than one seat from an aisle. Combined with a seat pitch of thirty-two inches in economy — which is two inches more than the current standard on most long-haul 707 and DC-8 operations — this produces an economy class cabin that is substantially more comfortable than the current generation of long-haul aircraft provides."
"How does eight-abreast wide-body compare to the 747's economics?" Lim Boon Keng asked. "The 747 seats over four hundred. You're at two-twenty."
"The comparison depends on what route you're flying and what load factors you achieve," Krishnamurti said. "The 747's economics are strong when you can fill it. The 747 at less than seventy percent load factor on a long-haul route produces unit economics that are actually worse than the 707 at equivalent load factors, because you are carrying the weight of an aircraft designed for four hundred passengers with two hundred and eighty people in it. The Samudra's economics are strong at load factors from sixty percent upward, because the aircraft is sized correctly for the route-load profile of most long-haul routes in the Asian and Middle Eastern markets that are not the primary trunk routes of the North Atlantic." He paused. "The 747 is an extraordinary aircraft designed for the New York-London trunk route and routes of equivalent traffic density. The Samudra is designed for the routes that exist between the 707 and the 747 — routes that have too much traffic for the 707 to handle efficiently and not enough traffic to fill the 747 economically. That is most of the route network in our region."
Ir. Suryatno had leaned forward slightly. He was looking at the fuselage cross-section with the attention of a man who has been trying to solve a specific problem for several years and has just been shown a solution.
"The cargo capacity," Ir. Suryatno said.
"Two standard cargo holds," Krishnamurti said. "Forward hold: eight LD3 containers or equivalent. Aft hold: four LD3 containers plus bulk. Total cargo capacity with full passenger load: approximately fifteen thousand kilograms. The cargo holds are fully compatible with the LD3 containers used in the 747, which means that any airline that co-operates cargo with a 747 operator has container compatibility." He paused. "For an airline serving island routes — and I note that Indonesia has thirteen thousand islands — the ability to carry meaningful cargo simultaneously with passengers on aircraft that can also operate from shorter regional runways is not a convenience. It is frequently the only commercially viable way to serve smaller island communities."
"The Samudra's short-field performance?" Ir. Suryatno asked.
"Field length required for takeoff at maximum takeoff weight at sea level: two thousand one hundred metres. That is comparable to the Boeing 727-200, which is the short-field capable narrowbody that many regional operators use specifically because of its runway flexibility." He paused. "The Samudra achieves the short-field performance of the 727 with the capacity and range of a wide-body, because the Sadhak-Max engine's high bypass ratio delivers the thrust required for short-field performance at a fuel burn that would be unachievable with older engine technology."
The aviation correspondent from Flight International had stopped taking notes and was looking at Krishnamurti with an expression that suggested he was recalibrating something.
The Type 120 Himalaya was the last aircraft, and Krishnamurti presented it with the specific care that people bring to a large, complex, ambitious thing — not slower, but differently paced, as if the aircraft itself required more space in the room than the other two had needed.
"The Himalaya is an ultra-long-range super-wide-body aircraft designed for intercontinental routes where the combination of range, capacity, and operating economics makes it superior to any aircraft currently available or on order." He walked to the model. "Three hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty passengers, depending on configuration. Range with full payload at the Type 120A standard configuration: fifteen thousand kilometres. The Type 120B, which is the extended-range variant with additional fuel tankage and structural reinforcement, achieves seventeen thousand kilometres with four hundred passengers."
He paused.
"The non-stop distance between Delhi and New York is approximately twelve thousand kilometres. Delhi to São Paulo is approximately fourteen thousand five hundred kilometres. Delhi to Sydney is approximately ten thousand kilometres. The Himalaya at standard configuration can fly all of these routes non-stop with a full payload. The Himalaya B can fly Delhi to São Paulo non-stop with four hundred passengers and reserves." He looked at the room. "This capability does not exist in any currently produced commercial aircraft. The Boeing 747-100, which is the longest-range production aircraft currently available, has a range of approximately ten thousand kilometres with full payload. The Himalaya's range advantage over the 747 is fifty percent."
The room absorbed this.
Aviation Week's correspondent said, from the press section: "What engines?"
"Four Sadhak-Max Ultra-High Bypass turbofans, in the same specification as the Type 90 Samudra's engines." Krishnamurti walked to the engine station. "Four engines at one hundred and ninety kilonewtons each gives the Himalaya a total thrust-to-weight ratio that provides the required field performance at maximum takeoff weight — a takeoff roll of approximately two thousand three hundred metres at sea level standard, which is comparable to the Boeing 747 from a field requirements perspective." He paused. "The specific fuel consumption advantage of the Sadhak-Max over the Pratt and Whitney JT9D means that the Himalaya, despite carrying more fuel for its extended range, has a fuel burn per passenger-kilometre that is approximately twenty-three percent lower than the Boeing 747 at equivalent passenger loads."
"The wide-body interior," said a journalist from the centre of the press section.
"Twin aisle, ten abreast in economy — two-six-two configuration — with a seat width of eighteen inches and a pitch of thirty-three inches in economy, compared to the 747's standard installation of seventeen-inch seats at thirty-two-inch pitch in ten-abreast configuration." He pointed to the cross-section model. "The difference of one inch in seat width and one inch in seat pitch sounds small in isolation. Across a seventeen-hour flight from Delhi to São Paulo, it is not small. Passenger comfort on ultra-long-range routes is not a luxury question. It is a market differentiation question. An airline that can offer a meaningfully better economy class experience on a route where the passenger is spending seventeen hours in that economy class seat has a competitive advantage that translates directly into load factors."
"The overhead structure," he continued. "The Himalaya's cabin architecture is worth noting specifically because it reflects a design philosophy that is different from the 747's." He pointed to the cross-section's upper deck area. "The 747 uses its upper deck for a small number of first-class passengers, which is an excellent use of what is essentially a bonus deck created by the aircraft's structural requirements. The Himalaya's fuselage cross-section creates a different geometry — we have used the additional volume in the crown section to create what we call the overhead service structure, which houses the entire length of the electrical and pneumatic ducting, the lighting system, the personal service units, and the passenger address speakers in a dedicated overhead zone rather than integrated into the cabin ceiling as in the 747." He paused. "This produces two practical benefits. First, the cabin ceiling height in economy is two hundred and twenty-five centimetres, which is eight centimetres more than the 747's economy ceiling. Passengers can stand fully upright in the Himalaya's economy cabin. On a seventeen-hour flight, the ability to stand upright while retrieving a bag from the overhead bin is not trivial." He allowed himself a fraction of a smile. "Second, the service structure is accessible for maintenance from above, without requiring removal of any cabin interior components, which reduces maintenance time for routine electrical and pneumatic system checks."
Dato' Hamid bin Tunku Azman raised his hand from the front row. It was the first time he had done so and it meant something.
"The avionics," he said. "I understand the military programme uses an advanced inertial navigation system. What is the civil programme using?"
"The Sadhak Navigation Computer Type Two," Krishnamurti said, "which is the civil certification version of the SNC-1 I described for the Saras, scaled and enhanced for the Type 90 and Type 120's longer routes and more complex navigation environment. The SNC-2 integrates inertial navigation, VOR/DME, ADF, ILS, and our own long-range navigation system — which uses LORAN-C signals and an onboard processing algorithm that provides accuracy comparable to the inertial system alone — in a unified navigation solution. The flight deck displays show a single composite navigation picture rather than requiring the crew to synthesise position from multiple separate instruments."
"LORAN-C range covers the routes we fly?" Lim Boon Keng asked.
"LORAN-C has coverage across the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, and significant portions of the Asia-Pacific. For routes outside LORAN-C coverage — portions of the Indian Ocean, the Southern Pacific — the SNC-2 transitions automatically to inertial-only navigation, which the onboard computer updates with position fixes whenever a terrestrial navigation aid is in range. The transition is automatic and transparent to the crew. The navigation display does not change its presentation depending on which input source is dominant." He paused. "The SNC-2 also has a flight performance monitoring function — it continuously computes the actual fuel burn against the planned fuel burn based on the current navigation solution and atmospheric data, and advises the crew if the actual performance deviates from plan by more than two percent. This is not a safety function. It is an operations economics function. A crew that knows their fuel burn is running two percent high has the information to evaluate whether a route optimisation — a different altitude, a different airspeed — can recover the deviation before arrival."
"This computer exists in production form?" Lim Boon Keng asked.
"The SNC-2 has completed its development and flight test programme," Krishnamurti said. "It has accumulated four thousand hours of flight testing on the Type 90 prototype. It is certified for civil aviation use by the Indian DGCA and we are in the process of securing type approval from the UK CAA, which is the authority whose approval most of our regional customers' regulatory frameworks are based on." He paused. "The CAA review commenced six weeks ago. We expect type approval within four months."
The presentation's second half was the one that the three Southeast Asian representatives had, in each of their private assessments, been waiting for without saying so — the operating economics presentation, the maintenance cost structure, the pricing, and the support infrastructure. These were the numbers that transformed an impressive technical presentation into a commercial decision.
Krishnamurti was replaced at the front of the room by a younger man, thirty-four, named Vikram Anand Bose, who was the civil division's head of commercial operations and who had the specific qualities of someone who had been a cost accountant for eight years before transitioning to aerospace commercial work, which meant he thought about operating economics with a precision that pure aviation people sometimes found excessive and that airline finance directors found precisely adequate.
Bose had three large charts that he mounted on the easel in sequence. The first compared the Saras against the Boeing 737-200 on a route of one thousand two hundred kilometres, carrying one hundred passengers, at a fuel price of thirty US dollars per barrel, which was the current market price in the third quarter of 1976. The Saras's direct operating cost per available seat kilometre came out at 4.2 US cents. The Boeing 737-200's comparable figure was 5.1 US cents.
He paused to allow this to register and then moved to the Samudra versus 707-320C comparison. The Samudra's direct operating cost per ASKM on a six thousand kilometre route was 3.8 US cents. The 707-320C's comparable figure was 4.9 US cents. The 747's comparable figure on the same route — the 747 operating at the seventy-five percent load factor that represented the achievable average for the route — was 4.3 US cents.
The Himalaya versus 747 comparison for a twelve thousand kilometre route: Himalaya at 3.6 US cents per ASKM. 747 at 4.1 US cents.
He put the third chart down.
"These numbers assume current fuel prices," Bose said. "I want to address that assumption directly, because anyone in this room who has been following the oil market since 1973 has reasons to believe that current fuel prices are not the appropriate basis for long-term fleet planning." He paused. "The Sadhak-Max engine's efficiency advantage over the JT9D and the CF6 widens as fuel prices increase. At forty dollars per barrel, the Samudra's operating cost advantage over the 707 grows from 1.1 cents per ASKM to 1.4 cents. At fifty dollars per barrel — which several energy economists have cited as a plausible medium-term price given the current OPEC dynamics — the advantage grows to 1.8 cents per ASKM." He looked at the front row. "An airline that orders the Samudra today is purchasing an operating cost position that improves relative to the alternatives as fuel prices increase. The Sadhak-Max engine's efficiency advantage is not a fixed number. It is a number that grows as fuel becomes more expensive."
Lim Boon Keng had set down his pen. He was looking at Bose with the expression of a man who has been given accurate data and is now doing what accurate data requires, which is applying arithmetic to it.
"The maintenance cost structure," Ir. Suryatno said.
"Yes." Bose moved to a different chart. "The Saras and Samudra share approximately sixty-three percent of their airframe structural components and approximately eighty percent of their systems components by part number. The Samudra and Himalaya share approximately fifty-eight percent of airframe structural components and seventy-four percent of systems components." He paused. "This commonality structure means that an airline operating both the Saras and the Samudra maintains spare parts inventory for approximately one-point-three aircraft types rather than two independent types. An airline operating all three maintains inventory for approximately one-point-seven types. The reduction in spare parts inventory, maintenance training requirements, and tooling requirements produces a maintenance cost reduction that we estimate at twelve to eighteen percent compared to an airline operating three aircraft types from different manufacturers with no commonality."
"The engine maintenance," Dato' Hamid said.
"The Sadhak-Max family shares eighty-five percent of its core components across the regional and full-scale variants. Engine overhaul can be performed at the same facility, by the same certified workforce, using the same tooling, for both engine variants. The Time Between Overhaul for the Sadhak-Max at current certification is twelve thousand hours. For comparison, the Pratt and Whitney JT8D's TBO is approximately eight thousand hours. The CF6-50 is rated at approximately ten thousand hours." He paused. "A longer TBO means fewer overhaul events per year per engine, which means lower maintenance cost and higher aircraft utilisation." He looked at the front row. "We are currently in the process of seeking CAA approval for the TBO figure. Our internal data from the flight test programme suggests the engine's actual overhaul interval can be extended to fifteen thousand hours, but we have elected to certify conservatively at twelve thousand pending more hours in service."
"What is the list price?" Lim Boon Keng asked. The question was asked flatly, without preliminary, which was how Singapore Airlines people asked questions.
"The Type 60 Saras: twenty-two million US dollars per aircraft at list price," Bose said. "The Boeing 737-200's current list price is eighteen million dollars. We are offering the Saras at a twenty-two percent premium to the 737-200. Given the direct operating cost advantage of 0.9 cents per ASKM at current fuel prices, an airline flying one hundred and twenty sectors per aircraft per month, which is a normal utilisation rate, recovers the price premium in direct operating cost savings within approximately twenty-six months from delivery."
He moved to the next aircraft. "The Type 90 Samudra: forty-seven million US dollars per aircraft at list price. The Boeing 707-320C's current list price is approximately twenty-nine million dollars. The Boeing 747-200's current list price is approximately forty-five million dollars. The Samudra is at a thirty percent premium to the 707 and a five percent premium to the 747. Against the 707, the direct operating cost advantage recovers the price premium in approximately eighteen months at standard utilisation. Against the 747, the comparison is more complex because the aircraft serve different capacity segments, but at the route-level economics for routes under eight thousand kilometres with traffic densities below the 747's optimal load factor, the Samudra produces better economics per passenger-kilometre at the Samudra's price point than the 747 at the 747's price point."
"And the Himalaya?" Air India's chairman asked. He had been quiet through most of the presentation, which was the behaviour of a man who had already decided something and was using the presentation to confirm rather than to discover.
"The Type 120A Himalaya: seventy-six million US dollars. The Type 120B extended-range variant: eighty-two million US dollars. For comparison, the Boeing 747-200's current list price is forty-five million dollars. We are at a significant premium to the 747." Bose paused. "The premium is justified on three grounds. First, the range advantage — fifteen to seventeen thousand kilometres versus ten thousand — allows routes that the 747 cannot fly non-stop. Delhi to New York. Delhi to São Paulo. Delhi to Buenos Aires. Non-stop service on these routes commands a revenue premium from passengers and freight customers that more than offsets the aircraft's price premium in route economics. Second, the operating cost per ASKM advantage of 0.5 cents at current fuel prices, growing to 0.9 cents at fifty dollars per barrel, produces a cost position over a twenty-year aircraft life that substantially reduces the effective ownership cost relative to list price. Third—" he paused — "the Himalaya has no competition. There is no other aircraft in production or in firm development that offers this combination of range and capacity. An airline that wants to fly non-stop between Delhi and New York with four hundred passengers has two choices: the Himalaya, or the Himalaya."
This produced a specific quality of silence that is produced in commercial negotiations when someone has said something that is both slightly arrogant and completely accurate.
The Indian Airlines chairman, N. Krishnan Pillai, asked to speak before the Southeast Asian guests presented their questions. He was fifty-eight, a career civil servant who had spent most of the previous decade managing the specific challenges of a state airline serving a vast domestic network with inherited colonial infrastructure and modern traffic growth, which had produced in him the kind of resigned operational realism that is only available to people who have been dealing with air traffic delays, aircraft utilisation issues, and spare parts shortages simultaneously and continuously for a decade.
He stood.
"Indian Airlines has been evaluating the Saras and the Samudra since the prototype programme began," he said. "I will not pretend to be an objective observer of this morning's presentation. I am not an objective observer. I have been involved in the specification discussions for these aircraft for three years, and what I can tell you is that the aircraft described in this morning's presentation corresponds to the aircraft that Indian Airlines has asked for, in the detail that we have asked for, which is not a coincidence." He paused. "Indian Airlines is placing an order today. Thirty Saras aircraft and twenty Samudra aircraft, for delivery beginning in 1979, at the pricing structure that we have negotiated with the commercial team over the preceding six months."
He sat down.
The room received this with the specific quality of attention that a major order announcement produces in a room full of aviation industry people — not surprise, because the rumour had been circulating for two months, but confirmation, which produces its own distinct feeling.
Lim Boon Keng said, in the front row, to nobody in particular: "Thirty and twenty."
Ir. Suryatno said, also to nobody in particular: "These are serious numbers."
Air India's chairman spoke next, without standing. "Air India's position is similar. We have been in discussions with the commercial team regarding the Himalaya for eighteen months. We are placing an order for twelve Type 120A Himalaya aircraft, for delivery beginning in 1980, with options on six additional Type 120B extended-range variants, subject to CAA certification of the extended-range configuration." He paused. "We are also placing an order for eight Type 90 Samudra aircraft, for the medium-haul international routes on which the Samudra's range and economics are particularly appropriate. The Delhi-Singapore route. The Bombay-Bangkok route. The Bombay-Nairobi route."
The room was very attentive now. The combined Indian Airlines and Air India announcement was forty Saras, twenty-eight Samudra, and twelve Himalaya — eighty aircraft, at list prices that the aviation journalists were computing in their heads and arriving at a number that was in the vicinity of three thousand million US dollars before discounts.
Aviation Week's correspondent was writing very fast.
Dato' Hamid bin Tunku Azman of Malaysia Airlines System spoke at length and with the specific care of a man who has been in negotiation for several months and is now making a public statement that will form part of the record of the negotiation he is still completing.
"Malaysia Airlines System has been evaluating our fleet requirements for the period 1979 to 1985," he said. "Our network spans the Malaysian peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo, and the regional international routes from Kuala Lumpur to our primary destinations in the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East." He paused. "The Saras's performance on short-field operations — the one thousand six hundred metre field length requirement — is of specific relevance to several of our Borneo destinations, where runway length is a constraint. The Saras provides us with a capacity upgrade path from our current twin turboprop operations on those routes without requiring the runway extension investments that the Boeing 737's field length requirement would necessitate."
He looked at the model on the plinth.
"Malaysia Airlines System is placing a letter of intent for twelve Saras aircraft and six Samudra aircraft, contingent on final technical review and commercial terms. This letter of intent will convert to a firm order upon completion of that review, which we expect to complete within ninety days." He paused. "I want to be specific about what a letter of intent from Malaysia Airlines System represents, because I do not want this to be misunderstood. A letter of intent is not a firm order. It is a commitment to the process of reaching a firm order. We are committing to that process because, on the basis of what we have reviewed this morning and in the months preceding this presentation, we believe the Saras and the Samudra are the correct aircraft for our network requirements."
Lim Boon Keng of Singapore Airlines spoke without the preliminary framework that Dato' Hamid had used. Singapore Airlines was a young carrier but it was already developing the institutional clarity of a company that knew what it wanted.
"Singapore Airlines' interest is primarily in the Type 90 Samudra," he said. "Our network is international. The regional routes — Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore to Jakarta, Singapore to Bangkok — we operate with our existing narrow-body fleet. The routes where we are evaluating capacity additions are the medium and long-haul international services. The Samudra's range of twelve thousand kilometres gives us Singapore to Bombay non-stop, Singapore to the Gulf non-stop, Singapore to Tokyo with very comfortable reserves." He paused. "Singapore Airlines is placing a letter of intent for eight Samudra aircraft. We are also placing a letter of intent for two Himalaya aircraft, for evaluation of the ultra-long-range routes — Singapore to London, Singapore to continental Europe — which we are planning to introduce in the early 1980s. If the Himalaya's performance in service with Air India matches the specification presented this morning, we will be in a position to convert those Himalaya options to a larger firm order."
Ir. Bambang Suryatno of Garuda Indonesia was the last of the three Southeast Asian representatives to speak, and his statement was the most detailed, which reflected the specific complexity of Garuda's network and the specific problem that Garuda had been trying to solve for years.
"Garuda Indonesia's network presents requirements that are unusual," he began. "We serve thirteen thousand islands. Our primary hubs are Jakarta, Denpasar, Surabaya, and Medan. Our long-haul routes connect Jakarta to Amsterdam — which is the legacy of our Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij relationship — to Tokyo, to Jeddah, and to the other major Asian hubs." He paused. "The problem we have is that no single aircraft type serves all of these requirements. For the island routes — Ambon, Manado, Kupang, Merauke — we need aircraft with short-field performance, regional range, and the ability to carry meaningful cargo in addition to passengers, because many of these islands depend on air cargo for goods that cannot reach them by sea within acceptable timeframes." He paused again. "For the long-haul routes, we need the economics and the range that the Samudra and the Himalaya offer."
He looked at Krishnamurti, who had returned to the stage.
"What the Shergill Aerospace civil programme offers Garuda is a fleet family that addresses both requirements with the maintenance commonality that makes operating two fundamentally different missions from the same maintenance base economically viable." He picked up his notebook. "Garuda Indonesia is placing a letter of intent for fourteen Saras aircraft, eight Samudra aircraft, and — subject to extended range variant CAA certification — two Himalaya-B aircraft for the Jakarta-Amsterdam route." He looked at the room. "If the Himalaya-B achieves its specified range, we can eliminate the refuelling stop at Dubai on the Jakarta-Amsterdam route. The commercial value of a true non-stop Jakarta-Amsterdam service to our premium passengers is significant."
The room was doing mathematics again.
The combined letters of intent and firm orders on the table: Indian Airlines, thirty Saras and twenty Samudra. Air India, twelve Himalaya-A and eight Samudra. Malaysia Airlines System, twelve Saras and six Samudra. Singapore Airlines, eight Samudra and two Himalaya-A. Garuda Indonesia, fourteen Saras, eight Samudra, two Himalaya-B.
The Saras total: fifty-six aircraft. The Samudra total: fifty aircraft. The Himalaya total: sixteen aircraft.
One hundred and twenty-two aircraft on order or letter of intent, on the day of the programme launch.
The technical briefing for journalists ran from eleven until one, when lunch was served. Krishnamurti and Bose answered questions for two hours, and the quality of the questions — their specificity, their technical depth, the degree to which they had done prior research — told Krishnamurti something about how seriously the aviation press was taking the programme.
Flight International's correspondent asked about the Sadhak-Max engine's development history and its relationship to the military engine programme. Krishnamurti gave the true answer, which was that the civil Sadhak-Max had been developed as a parallel programme to the military Kaveri engine family, sharing core component architecture but diverging significantly in the bypass ratio and the turbine temperature targets — the military engine prioritising thrust-to-weight ratio, the civil engine prioritising bypass efficiency. He noted that the shared component architecture produced genuine economies of scale in the development of both programmes and would produce genuine economies of scale in the manufacturing of both, and that this was a deliberate design choice made at the programme's inception rather than a serendipitous consequence.
Aviation Week's correspondent asked about the avionics certification timeline and specifically about the relationship between the ISMC-developed navigation computer and the international certification authorities. Bose answered this, because it was a commercial rather than a technical question at its core: the DGCA certification was complete, the UK CAA review was in progress, the FAA had been notified of the programme and had expressed interest in reviewing the type certificate application but no formal FAA process had been initiated because the aircraft's initial target market did not require FAA approval. The CAA approval, expected within four months, would be the certification that unlocked the Southeast Asian operators whose regulatory frameworks were derived from the UK CAA framework.
The correspondent from Jane's asked about structural design philosophy — specifically, what design margin the airframe used above the regulatory minimum fatigue life requirements. Krishnamurti answered this with the precision of someone who has thought about it carefully and has a position he is confident in: the Saras and Samudra were designed to a fatigue life of ninety thousand flight cycles at the design operating weight, compared to the FAA's minimum requirement certification at twenty thousand cycles. The margin was not a safety margin in the sense of redundancy — it was an economic life margin. An aircraft that is structurally sound at ninety thousand cycles will be commercially viable for twenty-five to thirty years of operation, which is the economic life that airline fleet planners need when they are amortising aircraft purchase cost over service life.
The Jane's correspondent wrote this down and then said: "That is a more rigorous fatigue design standard than Boeing's current published fatigue life targets for the 737 family."
"Yes," Krishnamurti said. "It is."
He did not say it as a boast. He said it as a fact that the correspondent could verify independently and should.
Lunch produced the conversations that conferences produce between formal sessions — the conversations that were in some ways more important than what had been said on stage, because they were the conversations in which people said what they actually thought rather than what was appropriate to say in a formal presentation setting.
Lim Boon Keng found himself at the same table as Krishnamurti, which was not accidental — Krishnamurti had specifically asked to be seated at whatever table the Singapore Airlines representative was using, because Singapore Airlines was the most demanding customer in the region and the most demanding customer's questions were the most useful questions.
"The eight-abreast configuration in the Samudra," Lim Boon Keng said, over rice and dal that the catering team had produced in a terminal that did not normally serve lunch. "You're setting the economy seat pitch at thirty-two inches. Singapore Airlines currently operates at thirty inches on 707 long-haul services. You're asking us to accept two inches more pitch — which is more passenger comfort, which is good — but also accepting that we carry fewer passengers per flight compared to a thirty-inch pitch configuration."
"You can configure the Samudra at thirty-inch pitch if you choose," Krishnamurti said. "The seat rails are designed to accept pitch settings from twenty-eight to thirty-four inches. The thirty-two-inch pitch we use in our reference configuration is the pitch at which the aircraft's economics in the comparison I presented this morning are accurate. If you configure at thirty-inch pitch and carry more passengers, your revenue per flight increases and your cost per ASKM stays approximately constant, so your economics actually improve relative to the comparison."
"Then why did you present the thirty-two-inch pitch as the reference?"
"Because we want the aircraft to have a reputation for passenger comfort," Krishnamurti said. "The reference configuration is what Shergill Aerospace recommends and what we will publish as the standard. Individual airlines can vary from it. But the aircraft's reputation in the market will be shaped by what passengers experience, and the passenger who has flown in a thirty-two-inch pitch Samudra will remember it differently from the passenger who has flown in a thirty-inch pitch 707."
Lim Boon Keng considered this. "You are making a long-term brand argument."
"I am making a long-term market position argument," Krishnamurti said. "Singapore Airlines will shortly be competing on the routes you're targeting not only with the aircraft's economics but with the quality of the experience you offer passengers who have a choice between carriers. An aircraft that is meaningfully more comfortable than what your competitors operate is a competitive asset." He paused. "We designed the Samudra to be that aircraft."
Ir. Suryatno found himself with Bose, at a table that included two of the DGCA officials and the Indian Airlines chairman.
"The Jakarta-Amsterdam route," he said to Bose. "If the Himalaya-B certifies to the stated range, how many hours is the flight non-stop from Jakarta?"
"At typical cruise conditions — mach 0.83, cruise altitude 35,000 to 39,000 feet — Jakarta to Amsterdam is approximately fifteen hours and forty minutes. The Himalaya-B carries enough fuel for seventeen hours at those conditions, plus the regulatory reserve." He paused. "The current routing with a Dubai stop is approximately eighteen to nineteen hours block time, depending on the stop's ground time. Non-stop is significantly better for passengers, particularly business-class and first-class passengers."
"The passenger who has a choice between a KLM routing via Amsterdam with a stop and a Garuda non-stop will choose Garuda," Ir. Suryatno said.
"Yes," Bose said. "That is the route economics case for the Himalaya-B."
"And if KLM eventually gets an aircraft with this range?"
Bose looked at him. "If KLM eventually gets an aircraft with this range, they will buy it from us or they will wait approximately ten years for Boeing or Airbus to develop an equivalent. By that time, Garuda will have been operating the non-stop route for ten years and will have established the commercial relationship with the route's passenger base that is very difficult to dislodge with a competing service, however good the aircraft it is eventually operated with." He paused. "First-mover advantage on a non-stop route is real and it is substantial. The airline that opens a non-stop route retains the majority of the route's premium traffic even after competitors enter, because the route's reputation was built by the opening airline."
Dato' Hamid had found his way to a small group that included Krishnamurti and the Air India chairman and was asking a question that he had been holding since early in the presentation.
"The Saras on the Borneo routes," he said. "I want to understand the short-field landing distance. The takeoff performance at one thousand six hundred metres is specified at sea level standard. My Borneo airports are not all at sea level. Kota Kinabalu is near sea level, which is fine. Tawau is at twenty-eight metres — also fine. But some of our destinations in Sabah have elevation of three to five hundred metres." He paused. "What is the Saras's takeoff field length at five hundred metres elevation on a thirty-degree Celsius day?"
This was the kind of question that told Krishnamurti something important about the man asking it, which was that he had done the engineering calculation himself before asking it and wanted to confirm his answer.
"One thousand eight hundred and fifty metres," Krishnamurti said. "We have the altitude-temperature correction data for the Saras in the technical appendix of the package you'll receive. I will have our commercial team pull the specific runway analysis for each of your Borneo destinations and provide it to your operations team before the ninety-day review period is complete."
Dato' Hamid nodded. "That is the answer I expected. I wanted to confirm it."
"You had already done the calculation," Krishnamurti said.
"I had done an approximation," Dato' Hamid said. "You have done the precise calculation. Receiving the precise calculation is more useful than receiving confirmation of my approximation." He paused. "I want to say something directly. Malaysia Airlines System has been operating Boeing equipment since our founding. The decision to place a letter of intent for Shergill Aerospace aircraft is not a decision we have made lightly. We have made it because the technical performance and the economics are genuinely superior to the alternatives. We have also made it because Malaysia has an interest in the development of an Asian aerospace manufacturing base that is capable of producing aircraft of this quality, and because a Malaysian airline operating Indian aircraft sends a message about Asian technical capability that has value beyond the commercial transaction."
Krishnamurti looked at him. "I appreciate that."
"I am not saying it to receive appreciation," Dato' Hamid said. "I am saying it because I want your team to understand that Malaysia Airlines System's letter of intent is not a tentative commercial positioning. We are committed to the process of completing the order, and we are committing with the expectation that Shergill Aerospace will meet the technical and commercial obligations that this morning's presentation describes." He paused. "If you do not meet those obligations, we will not complete the order. I want that to be clearly understood."
"It is clearly understood," Krishnamurti said. "And it is the correct basis for doing business."
The formal event concluded at four in the afternoon with a press conference that Krishnamurti and Bose conducted jointly, with Krishnamurti answering technical questions and Bose answering commercial questions.
The Financial Times correspondent — who had arrived late and had been sitting in the press section with the slightly displaced attention of someone who is not primarily an aviation person and is therefore listening to different things than the aviation specialists in the room — asked a question that was different from the others in its frame.
"This programme," he said, "represents a very large capital commitment by Shergill Aerospace and by the Government of India in the form of Indian Airlines' and Air India's orders. What is the risk assessment if the aircraft's performance in service does not match the specifications presented today?"
Krishnamurti looked at him for a moment.
"The risk is real," he said. "I won't dismiss it. Any aircraft programme has a risk that the aircraft performs differently in service than it performs in testing. The mitigation is in the rigour of the testing programme — we have completed a combined four thousand eight hundred hours of prototype flight testing across the three aircraft types, which is at the upper end of what major manufacturers conduct before a type certificate application." He paused. "The specific performance area where our confidence is highest is the engine, because the Sadhak-Max has over six thousand hours of test bed running in addition to its flight test hours, and its specific fuel consumption figures are consistent across the testing programme to within one percent. Engines tend to perform in service as they perform in testing, once the early-service reliability issues are resolved. The fuel efficiency advantage we are claiming over the competing engines is well established by test data."
"And the areas where your confidence is lower?"
"The maintenance cost estimates are always the most uncertain element of an aircraft programme's operating economics," Krishnamurti said. "We have made our maintenance cost estimates on the basis of the test programme's evidence and on the basis of the component commonality structure I described this morning. Whether those estimates are accurate will only be known after several years of service operation. We have communicated this uncertainty to our airline customers, and we have structured our support contracts to include provisions for addressing maintenance cost deviations from estimate if they emerge." He paused. "I will also note that the Indian Airlines and Air India orders were placed by people who have been closely involved in the aircraft's specification and development process for three years. They have not ordered these aircraft on the basis of this morning's presentation. They have ordered them on the basis of three years of detailed technical review. Their decision to order should be understood as a technically informed decision rather than a reaction to a sales presentation."
Krishnan Pillai of Indian Airlines, from the front row, said: "That is accurate."
The Financial Times correspondent wrote something and then asked a follow-up. "The Southeast Asian operators — Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia — they are placing letters of intent rather than firm orders. Is that because of uncertainty about the programme, or about other factors?"
Bose answered this one. "Letters of intent are standard industry practice for new aircraft types from manufacturers that do not yet have a commercial service history with that aircraft type. Boeing received letters of intent before firm orders on the initial 747 programme. Airbus received letters of intent on the A300 before the first firm orders. The letters of intent from Malaysia Airlines System, Singapore Airlines, and Garuda Indonesia represent a commercial commitment to the evaluation process and a commercial intention to proceed. They become firm orders upon completion of the ninety-day technical review and the CAA type approval process." He paused. "We expect them to become firm orders."
After the formal event ended, after the journalists had filed their stories and the airline representatives had returned to their hotels, after the DGCA officials had left and the aviation industry figures had collected their technical packages and departed, Krishnamurti stood alone in the exhibition space looking at the three models.
He was fifty-six years old. He had spent thirty years in aerospace, which meant he had spent thirty years knowing what was possible before it existed, which was the specific condition of engineers who had been looking at the gap between the current state and the achievable state for so long that the gap itself had become a kind of companion. The gap was always present. The work was always the closing of it.
He had spent four years closing one part of it — the part that said India could not build commercial aircraft that were technically superior to foreign alternatives and economically competitive in international markets. The models on the plinths and the orders on the table had closed that part. The gap that remained was service — the gap between what was ordered and what was delivered, between what the specifications said and what the passengers who sat in the seats experienced, between what the maintenance engineers were promised and what the logbooks showed.
He thought about the Samudra's fuselage cross-section and the particular morning in 2019 when the interior design team had been arguing about the overhead bin geometry and had not been able to agree on the right answer and had come to him, as a last resort, and he had looked at the two competing proposals for approximately three minutes and had pointed to the one with the larger bin volume and said: "This one. The passenger who cannot fit their bag in the overhead is a passenger who is annoyed before the aircraft has moved." He had been right about that. Not because of any particular engineering insight but because he had been thinking, for four years, about what the passenger experienced rather than what was technically achievable, and sometimes those two things were the same and sometimes they were not and the discipline was knowing which.
He picked up his folder.
He turned off the exhibition space lights.
In the terminal outside, Indian Airlines Flight IC-103 to Bombay was being boarded at Gate 7. A Boeing 737-200, Indian Airlines livery, ninety-six passengers this evening on a route that would, in three years, be flown by a Saras carrying one hundred passengers with lower fuel burn and a slightly wider seat and an overhead bin large enough for their bags.
He walked to his car.
The work continued.
The press coverage that appeared the following morning in the Indian papers ranged from the enthusiastic to the analytical, with the Economic Times producing what Krishnamurti later described as the most accurate summary of the programme's significance in a sentence that appeared in the third paragraph of their front-page aviation story: The announcement represents the moment at which Indian aerospace transitions from a programme of military self-sufficiency to a commercial aerospace capability that is not merely self-sufficient but competitive — capable of producing aircraft that international operators choose on economic and technical merit rather than on national affiliation.
The Times of India's headline was shorter and less precise but more vivid: India Enters the Jet Age — as a Manufacturer.
Flight International's story, which appeared three days later and which was the most technically rigorous of the international coverage, noted the Sadhak-Max engine's bypass ratio as the programme's central technical achievement and described the SNC-2 navigation computer as "a significant advance in integrated avionics for commercial transport aircraft, particularly in the integration of multiple navigation sources into a single composite display." It also noted the programme's training and maintenance commonality structure as "unusually well thought-out for a new entrant manufacturer" and described the combined Indian Airlines and Air India order as "the kind of launch-customer commitment that established manufacturers require to bring a programme to market."
Aviation Week's story was the one that Krishnamurti read most carefully, because Aviation Week's stories were read in Seattle and in Toulouse and in Bristol, and what Seattle and Toulouse and Bristol thought about the programme would shape the competitive environment in which the programme would operate.
The story's headline was: India's Shergill Aerospace Launches Three-Type Commercial Fleet with 122-Aircraft Launch Order — Engine Technology Claims Merit Scrutiny.
He read that last phrase several times. Then he put the magazine down and looked at the specifications for the Sadhak-Max engine's specific fuel consumption, which he had verified personally, eight times, across the development programme, and which were accurate, and which would be scrutinised, and which would withstand the scrutiny because they were accurate.
He picked up the phone and called Bose.
"Aviation Week says the engine claims merit scrutiny," he said.
"I saw it," Bose said.
"Good," Krishnamurti said. "Prepare a full technical package — test data, methodology, independent verification by the DGCA test facility — and send it to Aviation Week's technical editor by Thursday. If they're going to scrutinise it, give them everything they need to scrutinise it properly."
"We'll look transparent," Bose said.
"We'll look confident," Krishnamurti said. "There is a difference. Transparent is when you share information because you have to. Confident is when you share information because you want people to see what you have." He paused. "We want people to see what we have."
He hung up.
He looked out the window of his office in Bangalore — the civil division's headquarters occupied three floors of the Shergill Aerospace campus's newest building, a glass-and-concrete structure that Krishnamurti had specifically requested be built without the symbolism that large buildings often acquired, meaning without atrium lobbies and monumental staircases and the kind of architectural assertion that announces its own importance. The office building looked like an office building. It was, inside, a place where people worked on aircraft.
The aircraft existed. The orders existed. The work that had produced both existed.
He thought about the Himalaya's fifteen thousand kilometre range and about what it meant for an airline that could take a passenger from Delhi to New York without stopping, and about the passengers who would make that journey in 1980, and about what the journey from Delhi to New York meant in a country that had been, until very recently, a country that bought its aircraft from other countries.
He thought: we made these.
He thought it without sentimentality, because sentimentality was not how he thought about the work. But he thought it with the specific satisfaction of a man who has spent thirty years knowing what was possible and has, finally, made a specific part of what was possible actually exist.
He opened the next file.
The Type 60 Saras's CAA type certificate application was scheduled for formal submission in November. The documentation needed to be reviewed. There were seventy-three sections. Section one was the aircraft's general arrangement and three-view drawing package.
He began reading section one.
There was still work to do.
There always was.
(also guys i am not changing story story would be as it was planned no change from fear)