With India set to buy 2.2 new airplanes for each of the 480 aircraft currently in service, it is poised to become the third-largest buyer of commercial passenger planes in the world. The U.S. and China are the only countries to have more pending aircraft orders says a report released by the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, a Sydney-based aviation think tank.
Boeing predicts that India will need 1,850 new planes over the next two decades, and says that these orders will be worth $265 billion. CNN reports that 220 million Indians flew last year — an annual increase of 20% — and the country is on track to overtake the U.K. as the world’s third-largest aviation market by 2026.
However, there are challenges to this expansion: airlines can buckle under the pressure and become defunct; infrastructure such as airports and traffic control will need to gear up to match India’s aviation boom.
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
