INDIA • REPORT
‘The ground is still catching up to the sky’
India’s business aviation market has the wealth, the demand and the political will to become one of the world’s great private aviation stories. So, why does the boom always seem to be five years away? Words: Fayaz Hussain
Ultra-luxury destination events continue to drive unprecedented private aircraft traffic to regional hubs across India.
INDIA • REPORT
‘The ground is still catching up to the sky’
India’s business aviation market has the wealth, the demand and the political will to become one of the world’s great private aviation stories. So, why does the boom always seem to be five years away? Words: Fayaz Hussain
Ultra-luxury destination events continue to drive unprecedented private aircraft traffic to regional hubs across India.
INDIA • REPORT
‘The ground is still catching up to the sky’
India’s business aviation market has the wealth, the demand and the political will to become one of the world’s great private aviation stories. So, why does the boom always seem to be five years away? Words: Fayaz Hussain
Ultra-luxury destination events continue to drive unprecedented private aircraft traffic to regional hubs across India.
India – lining up for growth.
FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN flightmovements in seven days. In 2024, the small airport in the southwestern city of Jamnagar, Gujarat – which usually averages just six flights a day – hosted 117 private jets in a single afternoon.
Jamnagar is traditionally known as a quiet Indian town; rich in heritage and artisan crafts. It also happens to be the hometown of the billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s family and location of both the world’s largest oil refinery, Jamnagar Refinery, and their massive wildlife sanctuary, Vantara. When Reliance Industries chairman Ambani celebrated his son Anant’s wedding, the town temporarily became the epicentre of global wealth, drawing tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg, international pop stars like Rihanna and Bollywood royalty the Khans.
To manage the logistical nightmare, Reliance deployed five of its own corporate jets to run 67 rapid shuttle flights from Mumbai. Yet Jamnagar airport’s tarmac quickly faced a parking crisis. Multi-million-dollar private aircraft circled over rural India for up to 30 minutes waiting for a slot, only to drop off their passengers and immediately depart for hangarage at larger hubs hundreds of miles away in cities such as Mumbai.
The Ambani wedding was more than a display of extreme wealth. It’s a case study of India’s business aviation sector in miniature: the demand is undeniable, the money is real, but the infrastructure simply cannot keep up.
Big plans ahead
To keep pace with rising private and corporate travel demands, India is executing a massive, nationwide airport upgrade plan through 2035. Key developments include commitment to convert 100 local airstrips into operational regional airports alongside 37 proposed airport projects.
HOVER OVER THE NUMBERS BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION
⬤ Airports under public use
⬤ Airports under public use
1
AIRPORT INFRASTRUCTURE
There are seven planned air transport infrastructure projects across the state of Uttar Pradesh. The listed locations comprise Andhau Airstrip, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar Airstrip, Fursatganj Airfield, Jhansi Airstrip, Lalitpur Airport, Muirpur Airport and Palia Airstrip.
2
NOIDA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Airport construction began in Jewar in 2022. Designed to relieve pressure on Delhi’s IGI Airport, the facility reached commercial operation in 2026. Beyond scheduled passenger airlines, it caters directly to business aviation with a dedicated FBO terminal, streamlined customs processing and exclusive private jet aprons. These amenities offer corporate executives, charter operators and VVIPs efficient, congestion-free access to the National Capital Region (Delhi NCR) and Western Uttar Pradesh’s fast-growing economic hubs.
3
MAHARISHI VALMIKI INT.AIRPORT (AYODHYA)
Built over a former state airstrip, construction on Ayodhya’s greenfield expansion began in 2022. The facility was officially inaugurated in 2023 to support pilgrims visiting the Ram Mandir. Designed with dedicated aprons and VVIP transit areas, it actively caters to business aviation by providing seamless processing, runway parking and handling for private charters carrying corporate heads, dignitaries and HNW pilgrims directly to the holy city.
4
NAVI MUMBAI INT.AIRPORT
Developed by the Adani Group to de-congest Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, was officially inaugurated in October 2025 and launched commercial flight operations in December 2025. The airport plays a crucial role in business aviation by featuring dedicated corporate jet infrastructure, including approximately 67 general aviation aircraft stands and a planned separate heliport.
5
INDIRA GANDHI INT.AIRPORT
Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport faces severe airspace and ground-side congestion. To shield private jet operators, corporate leaders and VVIPs from these bottlenecks, the airport features India’s first dedicated general aviation terminal. The facility bypasses main terminal crowds by offering 57 exclusive business jet parking bays, private hangars, fast-tracked customs and immigration, luxury executive lounges and direct apron access.
37 NEW AIRPORTS
New airports have been proposed across the country in states from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu to Jharkhand, Nagaland and Uttarakhand. The government has approved the Modified UDAN / Viksit UDAN framework, committing over INR 28,800 crore ($3bn) toward regional aviation through 2035. This plan targets converting 100 airstrips into operational regional airports.
A market on the cusp
The numbers alone make a compelling case. India added more than 30 business jets in 2025, the highest growth rate in the Asia-Pacific region. The country’s business jet fleet, which stood at 146 aircraft in July, tells only part of the story. India is now home to the world’s third-largest population of high-net-worth individuals, up from ninth place just a decade ago. The business aviation market, valued at $650m in 2024, is forecast to reach $1.1bn by 2033. Under favourable conditions, insiders believe the cumulative business and charter fleet could exceed 700 aircraft by 2029.
The market’s potential was described by Faiz Ahmad Kidwai, director general of India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) at our inaugural CJI conference in New Delhi in March.
“India stands at the cusp of a revolution in non-scheduled operators [NSOP] which manifests in business travel, charter jets, air ambulances, logistics and cargo,” he said. “Government policies are enabling new airports. We are inaugurating one in almost every 45 to 50 days and business usage through business jets is one such use which we would like to promote.”
It was the kind of statement that the Indian business aviation community has been waiting years to hear from a regulator. Kidwai, who joined the DGCA in January 2024, has quickly built a reputation for unusual openness.
One insider tells CJI that Kidwai’s approach was different to previous DGCAs. “He asks his staff not to list reasons why things cannot be done, but to convince him they are impossible,” the insider tells us. For a sector that has historically felt overlooked by regulators preoccupied with commercial aviation, this change in tone and approach is welcome.
On the ground, the evidence of wealth chasing aircraft is hard to miss. Nitin Sarin, managing partner at Sarin & Co, one of India’s leading aviation law firms, has watched the market transform over the past decade.
“Companies and businesses are making a tremendous amount of money. People are done with their Rolls-Royces and Maybachs, moving on from helicopters to jets. That’s one big shift we’ve been seeing. There are a huge number of new assets coming into the country,” he tells us.
“Companies and businesses are making a tremendous amount of money. People are done with their Rolls-Royces and Maybachs, moving on from helicopters to jets.”
Sarin is quick to add nuance. The buyers driving today’s market are not, for the most part, mega entrepreneurs such as the Ambanis and Adanis – those dynasties have long since moved into Boeing Business Jets and Airbus Corporate Jets. The new cohort is the tier below: the manufacturing businessman who took his pipes business public and woke up one morning worth $4bn; the pharma founder expanding into southeast Asia; the family business that has been quietly growing for three generations and has finally decided that time is money.
“That’s the category of people who are coming in and exploring the medium-sized jets, especially the G500 and the smaller ones. That’s where we’re seeing a lot of interest,” Sarin tells us.
Faiz Ahmed Kidwai: Former director general of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in India.
Faiz Ahmed Kidwai (centre) and R K Bali, MD (left), Business Aircraft Operators Association have a discussion at CJI New Delhi.
Room for expansion
Airports per 50M population
6 INDIA
15 CHINA
200 UNITED STATES
General Aviation Operations at CSMIA in Kalina handle non-scheduled executive and private jet flights through a dedicated terminal.
The tax that built an industry
To understand why India’s business aviation sector looks the way it does, you need to understand one number: 40%. That is the effective import duty levied on aircraft brought into India under private ownership – a figure that changes a $10m aircraft into a $14m purchase before a single flight hour has been logged.
The consequences of this have been profound and, in some ways, contradictory. Rather than simply suppressing demand, the duty has reshaped the entire structure of how Indian businesses own and operate aircraft. Because aircraft registered under a NSOP attract import duty of only around 5-7%, virtually every major Indian corporate house has established its own charter subsidiary, not to charter to the public, but to fly within their own group.
Sarin explains the arrangement with the fluency of someone who has had this conversation many times. “If you show the aircraft as a NSOP, where it can be leased out for charters, the duty comes down tremendously to about 5% or 5.5% . So, you find a lot of business houses setting up their own NSOPs just to avail that benefit. And why not? It is a substantial amount of money,” Sarin says.
Reliance (owned by Jamnagar’s Ambanis), for example, operates its fleet entirely within the Reliance group. The Adani Group (owned by billionaire Gautam Adani) does the same, running a fleet of 10-12 aircraft that never carry a paying external passenger. It is, in effect, a private air force dressed in the regulatory clothing of a charter operation, entirely legal and rational given the incentives involved.
But for buyers who don’t fit the financial profile of Adanis and Ambanis, acquiring an aircraft requires a lot of hand holding. Atiesh Mishra, founder of AJM Jet Management who advises clients on ownership structures before any aircraft purchase decision is made, walks buyers through the calculus carefully. It’s not just the question whether you should register as an NSOP or not but also involves financial decisions.
“For transactions above $50m, it makes sense to create an offshore structure, a special purpose vehicle in Malta or another tax-friendly jurisdiction, secure financing at around 5-6% internationally and then lease the asset back into India, making it a tax-efficient structure,” Mishra tells us. “However, international lenders typically impose conditions: the asset must be less than 10 years old and valued at $50m or above.”
CSMIA Terminal 2 serves as Mumbai’s primary hub for private jets and corporate travel, offering dedicated GA handling and FBO access.
“Permanent home- based parking is a concept I don’t think is going to work anymore in areas like Mumbai.”
RAJESH BALI Captain Bali leads the Business Aircraft Operators Association.
Below that threshold, the options narrow considerably. Indian banks, unfamiliar with aviation assets and constrained by laws that make aircraft repossession in the event of default legally fraught, have largely declined to participate in the market. Sarin receives two or three calls a week from buyers asking if his firm can help them find financing.
“It’s the biggest challenge. We have to tell them: ‘No, we are lawyers.’ Then they say, where can we find financing from? And that’s the biggest challenge. They have to route it through a foreign structure, get UK lawyers involved, Irish lawyers involved and the cost just skyrockets,” he adds.
The result is a split market. The largest corporate buyers which include the likes of Reliance, Tata, Adani, simply pay cash. The ultra-wealthy individual with a sprawling but opaque family business finds themselves effectively locked out, not for lack of money, but for lack of the documentation that international lenders require.
“Many of them may run very large businesses but may not comply with know your customer [KYC] requirements, which makes lenders very selective. When I approach lenders for term sheets, they are often happy to engage initially – but then they come back and ask whether the client has an existing banking relationship with them, whether it’s UBS, BNP Paribas, or similar institutions. That relationship is often a prerequisite,” Mishra says.
This is the central irony for India’s business aviation market: it is simultaneously one of the world’s fastest-growing pools of wealth and one of the hardest places in the world to finance a business jet.
Even for those who can buy a jet, the problems do not end at the point of purchase. They move to the tarmac – where they are joined by a parking crisis that threatens to become one of the sector’s most acute constraints.
Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport is, in infrastructure terms, a paradox. It is India’s busiest airport for commercial traffic and the natural home base for many of the country’s largest corporate jet fleets. It is also built around two intersecting runways, which means that for all practical purposes it functions as a single-runway airport. Space is not just tight; it is structurally constrained in a way that cannot be engineered away.
In July 2024, the airport cancelled all existing grandfather parking rights – the long-standing arrangements that had given major corporate houses a permanent home base on the tarmac. Operators were told to move to Navi Mumbai – a new extension of the city. For many, this meant parking charges that had been manageable suddenly became punishing.
“Permanent home-based parking is a concept I don’t think is going to work anymore in areas like Mumbai.”
RAJESH BALI Captain Bali leads the Business Aircraft Operators Association.
Below that threshold, the options narrow considerably. Indian banks, unfamiliar with aviation assets and constrained by laws that make aircraft repossession in the event of default legally fraught, have largely declined to participate in the market. Sarin receives two or three calls a week from buyers asking if his firm can help them find financing.
“It’s the biggest challenge. We have to tell them: ‘No, we are lawyers.’ Then they say, where can we find financing from? And that’s the biggest challenge. They have to route it through a foreign structure, get UK lawyers involved, Irish lawyers involved and the cost just skyrockets,” he adds.
The result is a split market. The largest corporate buyers which include the likes of Reliance, Tata, Adani, simply pay cash. The ultra-wealthy individual with a sprawling but opaque family business finds themselves effectively locked out, not for lack of money, but for lack of the documentation that international lenders require.
“Many of them may run very large businesses but may not comply with know your customer [KYC] requirements, which makes lenders very selective. When I approach lenders for term sheets, they are often happy to engage initially – but then they come back and ask whether the client has an existing banking relationship with them, whether it’s UBS, BNP Paribas, or similar institutions. That relationship is often a prerequisite,” Mishra says.
This is the central irony for India’s business aviation market: it is simultaneously one of the world’s fastest-growing pools of wealth and one of the hardest places in the world to finance a business jet.
Even for those who can buy a jet, the problems do not end at the point of purchase. They move to the tarmac – where they are joined by a parking crisis that threatens to become one of the sector’s most acute constraints.
Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport is, in infrastructure terms, a paradox. It is India’s busiest airport for commercial traffic and the natural home base for many of the country’s largest corporate jet fleets. It is also built around two intersecting runways, which means that for all practical purposes it functions as a single-runway airport. Space is not just tight; it is structurally constrained in a way that cannot be engineered away.
In July 2024, the airport cancelled all existing grandfather parking rights – the long-standing arrangements that had given major corporate houses a permanent home base on the tarmac. Operators were told to move to Navi Mumbai – a new extension of the city. For many, this meant parking charges that had been manageable suddenly became punishing.
Rajesh Bali, who leads the Business Aircraft Operators Association and has been one of the industry’s most persistent advocates within government, describes the stand-off.
“These are little old habits. Giving a permanent home-based parking is a concept I don’t think is going to work anymore in areas like Mumbai. If you park an aircraft for one month and feel you have the right to keep it like this – I don’t think it’s going to work in India because the infrastructure is still being developed. There has to be a graded approach,” Bali tells us.
Reliance, backed by its wealth, has already arrived at its own solution: the group reportedly spent 300 crore Indian rupees (about $36m) acquiring a private hangar at the new Navi Mumbai facility. It is a solution available to perhaps a dozen Indian operators. For everyone else, the parking calculus remains a significant operating cost.
Delhi tells a different story, though not necessarily a more comfortable one. Indira Gandhi International Airport has more physical space than Mumbai and a private apron that is larger and more modern. But the sheer volume of commercial air traffic – India is already the world’s third-largest domestic aviation market after the US and China – means that private jets pay a different kind of price: time.
Arrow Aviation’s business development manager Tanya Singh describes flying one of her clients from Lucknow to Delhi, a journey of perhaps 45 minutes in the air. “Delhi to Lucknow, the flying time is not more than 40, 50 minutes. But the block time comes to about one hour 25 minutes, nothing less than that, because of the air traffic in Delhi. If you’re flying to Delhi, if you’re flying to Mumbai, your block time will increase by 20 to 25 minutes, sometimes even half an hour, because of the air traffic issue,” she tells us.
The point-to-point speed advantage that is the essential value proposition of business aviation is being eroded, at least into the two cities that generate most demand.
Corporate aviation at CSMIA operates under tight runway slot constraints, requiring precise flight scheduling for private jet operators and corporate fleets.
Neighbourly rivals
The China that got away
WHILE INDIA is working through some of the kinks that are stifling the industry’s growth, no comparison haunts the country’s business aviation community quite like China. In 2010, the two neighbours had virtually similar business jet fleets. India’s fleet was at 112 jets compared with roughly 105 in China. By 2020, China’s fleet had grown to 480 aircraft while India’s fleet size was stuck at around 134.
The boom during the decade after 2010 in China is not an easy act to follow for India’s business aviation market. Atiesh Mishra, an aircraft broker and advisor who has worked across the Indian market for years, knows the numbers by heart.
“What happened in China is beginning to happen in India now. We are the third-largest ultra-high-net-worth-individual population in the world, and our business aviation market is expected to become the third largest globally within 10 years. We are currently at around 200 jets, and I expect that number to reach 300 within the next decade – potentially faster. The key is that regulation needs to keep pace with demand,” Mishra tell us.
The gap is still significant. China’s explosive growth in the business aviation market was enabled by sweeping regulatory liberalisation, building up of dedicated general aviation infrastructure and a government that actively promoted the role of business aviation as a tool of economic development.
“The key is that regulation needs to keep pace with demand...”
Neighbourly rivals
The China that got away
“The key is that regulation needs to keep pace with demand...”
WHILE INDIA is working through some of the kinks that are stifling the industry’s growth, no comparison haunts the country’s business aviation community quite like China. In 2010, the two neighbours had virtually similar business jet fleets. India’s fleet was at 112 jets compared with roughly 105 in China. By 2020, China’s fleet had grown to 480 aircraft while India’s fleet size was stuck at around 134.
The boom during the decade after 2010 in China is not an easy act to follow for India’s business aviation market. Atiesh Mishra, an aircraft broker and advisor who has worked across the Indian market for years, knows the numbers by heart.
“What happened in China is beginning to happen in India now. We are the third-largest ultra-high-net-worth-individual population in the world, and our business aviation market is expected to become the third largest globally within 10 years. We are currently at around 200 jets, and I expect that number to reach 300 within the next decade – potentially faster. The key is that regulation needs to keep pace with demand,” Mishra tell us.
The gap is still significant. China’s explosive growth in the business aviation market was enabled by sweeping regulatory liberalisation, building up of dedicated general aviation infrastructure and a government that actively promoted the role of business aviation as a tool of economic development.
A Gulfstream business jet (VT-SMI) on final approach into Kolkata’s CCU airport, where regional business aviation movement relies on efficient ground handling and slot coordination.
The hidden costs
Parking and airspace congestion are the visible constraints on India’s business aviation infrastructure. Less visible, but no less corrosive, is the practice of bundling non-aeronautical charges with essential aeronautical services.
The pattern works like this. An operator requests a landing slot, which is essentially an aeronautical service, and the airport responds by making the slot conditional on payment of additional services such as meet-and-greet handling, which are technically non-aeronautical. Operators who refuse find themselves without a slot.
Bali has taken the problem to the country’s Airport Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA), which issued public instructions in mid-2024 that bundling non-aeronautical charges with aeronautical services constitutes an offence. He describes the enforcement challenge frankly: “Many operators are not willing to report actual incidents because they don’t want to spoil their relationship with airport operators. But we’re trying to educate them that in the long term, this is not good for the industry,” he tells us.
A Gulfstream business jet (VT-SMI) on final approach into Kolkata’s CCU airport, where regional business aviation
movement relies on efficient ground handling and slot coordination.
The hidden costs
Parking and airspace congestion are the visible constraints on India’s business aviation infrastructure. Less visible, but no less corrosive, is the practice of bundling non-aeronautical charges with essential aeronautical services.
The pattern works like this. An operator requests a landing slot, which is essentially an aeronautical service, and the airport responds by making the slot conditional on payment of additional services such as meet-and-greet handling, which are technically non-aeronautical. Operators who refuse find themselves without a slot.
Bali has taken the problem to the country’s Airport Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA), which issued public instructions in mid-2024 that bundling non-aeronautical charges with aeronautical services constitutes an offence. He describes the enforcement challenge frankly: “Many operators are not willing to report actual incidents because they don’t want to spoil their relationship with airport operators. But we’re trying to educate them that in the long term, this is not good for the industry,” he tells us.
The rule that holds everything back
If there is also one regulatory constraint that industry insiders highlight when asked what single change would most transform the Indian market. This is fractional ownership and specifically, the fact that it is currently not permitted.
The logic of fractional ownership for India is self-evident. A country with a rapidly expanding ultra-net-worth-worth-individual population, a cultural attachment to status and a strong entrepreneurial class that travels intensively but not necessarily frequently enough to justify sole ownership of an aircraft seems tailor-made for the model that NetJets pioneered in the United States. And yet, the regulatory framework has never allowed it.
“The regulations don’t allow fractional ownership. That’s the biggest problem. The industry has been after the government to allow fractional ownership, but it is simply not allowed. That is why all these big players who want to come in. They are entering the market in a pure charter form,” Sarin tells us.
The reasons the Ministry of Finance has historically resisted fractional are characteristically rooted in taxation. When multiple individuals own a share of a single imported asset, the question of how import duty, GST and depreciation benefits are attributed becomes legally complex. It is a solvable problem, every major aviation jurisdiction in the world has solved it. But it requires coordination between the civil aviation ministry and the Finance Ministry of India and that has, until recently, not been forthcoming.
There are signs that this is changing. The new Bharati Vayuyan Vidheyak Bill 2024, a comprehensive rewrite of India’s civil aviation regulations, includes provisions for both fractional ownership and professional aircraft management companies for the first time. Kidwai, in his conference address, was explicit about the timeline.
“As part of the new draft rules, regulatory provisions have been incorporated for enabling aircraft management service, which was not there earlier, as well as fractional ownership, with the view to provide for professional management of aircraft operations. If we talk of time frames – best case scenario should be about three to four months, maybe one or two months longer,” he told the attendees at CJI Conference in New Delhi.
Bali, who has been advocating for this change within industry association meetings for years, is cautiously optimistic but careful not to overclaim any quick turnaround.
“We had a dynamic minister who had started the process. Recently, I learned that in the next meeting, the draft on aircraft management company will be discussed with us, which is a start point for fractional ownership. I also see a lot of people lining up to start fractional ownership – big players and small players. Once they start, we will know,” he says.
The cultural dimension is real, too with several people interviewed for this article raising the topic unprompted. Indians, they suggest, are more attached to sole ownership than most nationalities. Sharing an aircraft, particularly on peak dates like New Year’s Eve, when every UHNWI in the country wants to fly simultaneously, creates scheduling conflicts that feel intolerable to buyers who have spent millions of dollars on their share.
“Many ultra-high-net-worth individuals run vast business empires, yet they often fail to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.”
Arrow Aviation’s Singh explains more about the cultural challenges to fractional aviation in India. “The ego comes in, obviously the sharing and also the date clashes. New Year’s is as important to me as it is to you. But I think with our generation [millennials, Gen Zs] becoming more conscious and with more startup founders and venture capitalists – I think that trend is going to change. Maybe if not now, but in another five-to-10 years,” she hopes.
Atiesh Mishra, who has discussed the challenges of fractional with his clients at length, identifies three interlocking barriers: tax structure, absent regulation and culture.
“The cultural dimension is very real. Indians generally prefer to own rather than share. Beyond that, the tax structure certainly doesn’t help fractional ownership. And the finance ministry has historically been resistant to changing this, viewing it as a luxury rather than a business tool. All three factors – tax, regulation and culture – play a role,” Mishra says.
NITIN SARIN Managing partner at Sarin & Co, one of India’s leading aviation law firms, brings extensive expertise in aircraft finance, leasing and regulatory compliance.
“If you’re flying to Delhi or Mumbai your block time will increase by 20 to 25 minutes, sometimes even half an hour, because of the air traffic issue.”
TANYA SINGH Senior manager of charters & marketing at Arrow Aircraft.
The missing link in the chain
Beyond tax and regulation, there is a third structural gap that receives less attention but is equally consequential: the absence of a professional aircraft management industry.
In the US or UK, a buyer who purchases a business jet can hand it to a professional management company such as TAG Aviation, Jet Aviation and many others. They handle everything from Continuing Airworthiness Management Organisation (CAMO) compliance and crew scheduling to parking, permits and maintenance coordination. The owner simply calls when they want to fly.
In India, this ecosystem barely exists. Mishra, who brokers aircraft sales and is frequently asked to find management solutions for his own clients, describes the gap with frustration.
“When I sell aircraft, clients almost immediately ask me to find someone reliable to manage it – and that’s a consistent problem. It’s partly an infrastructure issue. In Mumbai, you can’t park an aircraft for more than 48 hours, the new Mumbai airport is very expensive to operate and unlike the US or UK, we don’t have smaller municipal or general aviation airports. We also need more MROs – professional maintenance facilities – which require significant technology transfer,” Mishra tells us.
The maintenance picture is mixed. Routine scheduled maintenance is being managed within India. Arrow Aviation coordinates with local maintenance organisations for day-to-day work. But major maintenance, annual checks and significant repair or overhaul still typically requires sending aircraft out of India to Dubai, Singapore, or elsewhere, adding cost and downtime that smaller operators struggle to absorb.
Arrow Aviation’s Tanya Singh says maintenance delays often cascade into crises .
“If I’ve told a client that maintenance will take seven days, maximum eight days and now it is taking 20 days – that puts me in a very difficult position. The client doesn’t care about what’s happening on the back end, whether I’m receiving a spare part or not. Sometimes clients don’t even care about duty time limitations. It is very difficult to make them understand that the crew needs to rest for so many hours,” she tells us.
The new aircraft management provisions in the Bharati Vayuyan 2024 rules address this directly, creating for the first time a legal framework for third-party Aircraft Management Service Providers. Whether global players such as TAG or Jet Aviation will move to establish an Indian presence once the framework is in place remains to be seen – but the regulatory foundation, at least, is being laid.
Private charter operations at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, benefit from upgraded general aviation terminal infrastructure, expanded apron capacity and streamlined customs and immigration handling.
Private charter operations at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, benefit from upgraded general aviation terminal infrastructure, expanded apron capacity and streamlined customs and immigration handling.
Green shoots in the right places
The portrait painted so far, regulatory friction, infrastructure bottlenecks, a financing gap, an absent aircraft management industry, might suggest a market in difficulty. The reality is more nuanced. India’s business aviation community is not so much struggling as straining but, for the first time, those constraints appear to be easing.
The airport construction programme is real. India is opening a new airport about every 45 to 50 days. Navi Mumbai received its aerodrome licence in March 2026, with plans for 125 dedicated business aviation parking positions and a separate terminal. The Noida International airport, billed as the largest in Asia, began operations on June 15th and was constructed with explicit provision for business aviation infrastructure. New airports in Jaipur and across Uttar Pradesh will begin to absorb some of the pressure on Delhi.
GIFT City, the offshore financial centre in Ahmedabad, is attempting to build an aircraft leasing and financing hub that could, if it reaches critical mass, bring international financing structures onshore. Bali says he is talking to the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority to rationalise aeronautical charges and, crucially, its chairperson seems receptive.
The DGCA’s Kidwai himself was in the midst of reviewing all civil aviation requirements to simplify compliance. Kidwai committed to mandatory public disclosure of safety information by NSOP operators and is exploring a safety ranking system – steps that would bring India’s charter market closer to international standards and make it legible to foreign investors and operators.
Sarin, whose firm is positioned to benefit from increased transaction volume, remains measured in his optimism.
“I see ownership steadily and steadfastly increasing. There is no doubt about that. As far as regulation goes, it will be a slow one. There will be changes – but it is really seen as an uber luxury at the moment. It is not a priority for even the Civil Aviation Ministry. They are swamped with the commercial aspect. We will see a revolution in this space. But it might take slightly longer – about 15 years or so, before we’ll really see it open up,” he says.
“Indians generally prefer to own rather than share. Beyond that, the tax structure certainly doesn’t help...”
Mishra is more bullish but anchors his optimism on a condition. “We are the third-largest UHNWI population in the world. We are currently at around 200 jets, and I expect that number to reach 300 within the next decade – potentially faster. The key is that regulation needs to keep pace with demand. We also need more FBOs, more MROs and more public-private partnerships across geographies to fill the gaps in the chain,” he says.
ATIESH MISHRA Mishra, founder of AJM Jet Management advises clients on ownership structures.
Desi Jets
India’s bright spot
THE CHARTER market is one of the brightest spots. It is quietly booming across almost every demographic.
Atiesh Mishra, founder of AJM Jet Management says roughly 40% of the charter demand comes government and state officials and about 40% is corporate, which involves industrial groups, pharmaceutical companies and logistics. The remainder comes from Bollywood, cricket and entertainment.
The last part generates disproportionate social media attention but is the smallest segment. Bollywood actor and singer Diljit Dosanjh (pictured) is regularly seen onboard a private jet on Instagram.
The fastest growing sector is religious tourism. Every summer, tens of thousands of pilgrims make religious trips to Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotru and Gangotri. These shrines lie in the Uttarakhand region of northern India – remote and inaccessible.
VistaJet, which has established an Indian presence with four to five aircraft, is tapping into this demand. Nitin Sarin, of Sarin & Co, notes that VistaJet aircraft arrive at Chandigarh, hardly a major business hub, almost every week.
“Whether they’re flying to Amritsar to see the Golden Temple, or going to Indore, there are so many people who fly in. They don't want to deal with the riffraff. And they have the money to charter a plane,” Sarin notes.
The charter market is essentially the pressure valve for everything that the ownership market cannot yet accommodate.
Desi Jets
India’s bright spot
THE CHARTER market is one of the brightest spots. It is quietly booming across almost every demographic.
Atiesh Mishra, founder of AJM Jet Management says roughly 40% of the charter demand comes government and state officials and about 40% is corporate, which involves industrial groups, pharmaceutical companies and logistics. The remainder comes from Bollywood, cricket and entertainment.
The last part generates disproportionate social media attention but is the smallest segment. Bollywood actor and singer Diljit Dosanjh (pictured) is regularly seen onboard a private jet on Instagram.
The fastest growing sector is religious tourism. Every summer, tens of thousands of pilgrims make religious trips to Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotru and Gangotri. These shrines lie in the Uttarakhand region of northern India – remote and inaccessible.
VistaJet, which has established an Indian presence with four to five aircraft, is tapping into this demand. Nitin Sarin, of Sarin & Co, notes that VistaJet aircraft arrive at Chandigarh, hardly a major business hub, almost every week.
“Whether they’re flying to Amritsar to see the Golden Temple, or going to Indore, there are so many people who fly in. They don't want to deal with the riffraff. And they have the money to charter a plane,” Sarin notes.
The charter market is essentially the pressure valve for everything that the ownership market cannot yet accommodate.
Still circling the landing strip
Let’s return to Jamnagar. The images from the Ambani wedding – jets stacked over rural Gujarat, $70m aircraft parked on the tarmac of an airport that handles six flights on a normal Tuesday – tell the story of Indian business aviation more honestly than any market forecast.
The demand is not in question. When one family can generate 540 flight movements in a week in a city that ordinarily sees six a day, we are not looking at a nascent market. We are looking at a market that has outgrown its infrastructure, its regulatory framework, its financing ecosystem and its management industry simultaneously.
The DGCA chief’s address at the CJI New Delhi conference was, in its way, an acknowledgement of exactly this. His words about what needs to happen to boost business aviation highlights a regulator who is not just managing incremental change. It is the language of someone who understands that the gap between India’s wealth and India’s aviation infrastructure has become too large to ignore.
“It is evident that India’s story is shifting from latent potential to execution and scale. I see a great opportunity here for inviting the global business aviation community to establish their presence in the vibrant Indian business aviation market and create an international business aviation hub for the whole region,” he said.
But, symbolising the lack of consistency and continuity in policy making, only weeks after our CJI New Delhi conference, Kidwai was replaced by Vir Vikram Yadav.
Taking Kidwai’s mission forward would require Yadav to engage with the business aviation stakeholders. The process would have to be restarted by the stakeholders to press the urgency of the matters with Yadav from scratch. However, a lot of the groundwork has already been laid.
“It is evident that India’s story is shifting from latent potential to execution and scale.”
For business aviation in India, a lot of what needs to change depends on if Bharati Vayuyan 2024 rules are notified on schedule, fractional ownership becomes a reality, GIFT City evolves into a genuine financing hub and the new generation of airports opens with dedicated business aviation infrastructure. These measures will essentially determine whether India’s fleet reaches 300 jets or 700 in the decade ahead.
The wealth is already there. The will appears, for the first time in years, to be forming. What India’s business aviation sector is waiting for is the ground to catch up with the sky.
A mixed fleet of business jets parked up for routine service, maintenance, and turnarounds at Delhi International Airport.
