NAL TO DESIGN FIRST CIVILIAN AIRCRAFT RTA-70 FOR THE COUNTRY

India has initiated steps to build its first indigenous civilian transport aircraft under a public-private partnership project that will be undertaken in a national mission mode.The government has set up a 15-member high-power committee (HPC) on National Civil Aircraft Development with former ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair as its chairman for management and development of the key project.The first meeting of the core team of the committee comprising technologists is scheduled to be held tomorrow at the National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) in Bengaluru to chart out a broad vision for the project.The HPC will carry out a feasibility study for the project to be set up as a public-private partnership that is expected to evolve eventually into a new entity for development of a national civil transport aircraft and provide a basis for civil aircraft industry in the country.This development comes weeks after the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said that there was no technical flaw in the Saras aircraft. The Prototype-II of the Saras aircraft, developed by CSIR’s NAL, had crashed during a test flight on 6th March last year killing the three-member crew.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-NAL will assist the HPC in implementation of the project.The terms of reference of the HPC include evolving a strategy for development of a civil aircraft indigenously; provide details on aircraft definition and performance, technologies and system, manufacturing plan, investments required, risk analysis and holding discussions with global original equipment manufacturers for partnership avenues.The HPC has also been tasked to set up a core design group with seeding from CSIR-NAL which could be subsequently upgraded to a full-fledged design centre.The design centre will be set up by drawing manpower from CSIR-NAL, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Aeronautic Development Authority, Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Indian Space Research Organisation.Earlier, NAL had prepared a preliminary report on the need for a regional transport aircraft for the Indian market which is pegged at 400 planes over the next 20 years.