The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs today gave its approval to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) proposal relating to revised cost estimates of its project “Spearheading Small Civilian Aircraft Design, Development and Manufacture”. The revised proposal is at a total cost of Rs.172.80 crore up from earlier Rs.96 crore and revised time duration of 5 years up from earlier 4 years. The proposal is being implemented by the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), a constituent laboratory under CSIR. Considering the contributions already made by NAL in this area through 2 seater – HANSA and 14 seater light transport aircraft – SARAS, NAL / CSIR has been identified as the nodal agency for spearheading indigenous small aircraft programmes in the country.

The present proposal which was initiated during the 10th Five Year Plan of CSIR consists of four modules. The first module proposes design, development and certification of a 4 seater stretched HANSA aircraft. Such an aircraft was expected to play an important role in flying training, personal transportation, carriage of light packages and in low-end air taxi operations. The second module is on civil aircraft related R&D, Civil aviation policy research and Market analysis. The indigenous development of certain critical equipment both to increase the indigenous content of SARAS and also to guard against sudden embargoes is the part of the third module. The fourth module is addressing the weight optimisation, power optimisation and other improvements required on SARAS so that it can be made an operational aircraft with full payload and the required range.

With the implementation of this proposal, NAL/CSIR seeks to augment its premier position in civil aviation R&D.

Source : Press Information Bureau
Date : February 05, 2009