India’s Aviation Boom Has A Hangar Problem
India is expanding fleet capacity faster than it is building the maintenance backbone required to sustain it. The result is a growing hangar deficit across civil and defence aviation.
The Gist
- As airlines expand their fleets, the infrastructure for maintenance, namely hangars, is lagging behind.
- A memorandum of understanding between Tata Projects and ASI Global aims to address this oversight by constructing new maintenance facilities.
- The lack of adequate hangar infrastructure poses a strategic risk, leading to increased dependence on foreign maintenance, repair, and overhaul services.
India’s aviation boom has a critical blind spot. As airlines add aircraft and airports add terminals, the infrastructure that keeps those aircraft in shape — hangars and maintenance facilities — is falling behind.
A recent memorandum of understanding between Tata Projects Ltd (TPL) and Singapore‑based ASI (Aircraft Support Industries) Global to design and construct aircraft maintenance facilities in India has unlocked one of the most overlooked pillars of India’s aviation ecosystem.
The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding to design and construct aircraft maintenance facilities in India.
The partnership signals the start of a long‑delayed shift. From 2026 onwards, India’s aviation story will no longer be just about aircraft orders and route maps. It will increasingly be about the infrastructure that keeps those aircraft flying
India is expanding fleet capacity faster than it is building the maintenance backbone required to sustain it. The result is a growing hangar deficit across civil and defence aviation.
It exposes aircraft to weather and corrosion, delays heavy maintenance, forces airlines to send work abroad, and sustains a costly dependence on foreign MROs. With wide-body inductions accelerating and defence fleets modernising, the hangar gap is going from an operational inconvenience to a strategic risk.
Why Hangars Matter
For years, limited budgets and a relatively small commercial fleet meant India could manage with minimal hangar infrastructure. Line maintenance was often carried out in the open, while major checks for aircraft were done overseas. That model isn’t working anymore.
From 2026, the market for maintenance‑grade hangars is entering a decisive growth phase. Commercial and business fleets are expanding, airport capacity is increasing, domestic MROs are adding scale, and defence aviation is adopting new platforms at a record pace. At the same time, global safety and compliance standards are tightening, and operators are placing greater emphasis on asset protection and turnaround reliability.
“India requires at least three to four large MROs within a decade and a half valued at around $6 billion,” Rahul Sharma, executive vice president at the Urban Spaces Strategic Business Unit in Tata Projects, told The Core. Without enough hangars, aircraft sit exposed, checks get delayed, capacity stays constrained, and operators are forced to send work abroad.
Hangars are the backbone of any serious aviation ecosystem. They protect high-value assets, speed up maintenance, cut costs, and keep the fleet flying. “Airports-especially greenfield ones- must plan for hangars from day one. Too often, they realise too late that hangars are essential,” said Sharma.
Yet even India’s flagship greenfield airports, Navi Mumbai and Noida International, have launched without dedicated aircraft hangars. Both prioritised terminals, runways, and cargo, leaving maintenance facilities for later phases. Their omission underscores a deeper pattern: India is expanding passenger capacity faster than the infrastructure required to maintain the aircraft that carry those passengers.
With wide‑body operations rising and heavy checks still going abroad, airlines like Air India and IndiGo will need climate‑controlled hangars to protect assets and build in‑house capability. For airports, hangars are high‑value real estate that strengthen revenue and resilience; for airlines, they are critical to managing turnaround times and reducing AOG exposure.
A Multi‑Crore Market Hiding In Plain Sight
One of the clearest indicators of neglect is that most civil-aviation hangars in India still have no doors.
“While most military hangars have doors, most civil‑aviation hangars do not, creating an entire linked industry waiting to take off,” said Pratik Gandhi, Customer Care Manager at Mumbai‑based Gandhi Automations. “Doors for hangars are mandatory abroad and need to comply with European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) regulations that give an MRO clearance to service European‑registered and leased aircraft. It also gives the MRO global credibility.”
Across India, 160–200 legacy hangars need retrofitting. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has identified around 20 priority hangars, mostly at older metro and Tier‑2 airports, that require doors or full enclosures. These are high‑value, high‑traffic assets where open fronts directly affect safety, security, and maintenance reliability. Together, they form the first tranche of a retrofit market that could exceed 200 doors nationwide, said Gandhi.
“Doors are vital to safety, security, and operational efficiency, safeguarding aircraft, equipment, and personnel inside the facility,” said Rajeev Gupta, MD of part Adani -owned Indamer Technics Pvt Ltd, which has two hangars at its present Nagpur facility. A facility being planned on 30 acres will have the capacity to accommodate 15 aircraft bays across 10 hangars. The potential is immense.
Most Indian hangars remain open because they were built as low‑cost sheds. For decades, weak oversight, tight budgets, and slow procurement kept doors off the priority list. Today, monsoons, corrosion, and stricter security norms make enclosed hangars essential, but retrofits remain expensive and mired in bureaucratic drag.
Hangars Can’t Be An Afterthought
The entry of credible players is pulling hangars and maintenance out of the “side‑business” shadows. ASI Global, a leading MRO‑hangar specialist with 130 completed worldwide, including HAECO Xiamen and Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies’ landmark wide‑body Hangar 6, brings deep technical expertise. Tata Projects adds scale, discipline, and engineering, procurement and construction capability needed to professionalise the sector.
ASI Global MD Mark Langbein said the combination of ASI’s design and engineering expertise with Tata Projects' track record and in‑house steel fabrication “creates a true one‑stop solution from the ground up.” ASI’s advanced structural design and modular construction technology are likely to set new benchmarks for quality, safety, and speed‑to‑market in India.
“Meticulous planning and design are critical for any integrated MRO facility,” said Sharma. ASI’s Stressed Arch system, which uses far less steel, can stretch up to 300 metres and is emerging as a cost‑efficient option for wide spans. With IndiGo and Air India’s wide‑body aircraft nearing delivery, these hangars are expected to be in high demand.
Defence Hangars: Shielding Assets
India’s armed forces operate over 200 hangars across the Indian Air Force (IAF), Army Aviation Corps, and the Indian Navy. They are many decades old and built for smaller aircraft, or lacking modern systems like climate control, integrated docking, or blast‑resistant doors. As the fleet expands and threats evolve, the forces need larger, faster‑to‑build, wide‑span hangars that can support high‑tempo operations.
Planners estimate a requirement for 100–120 additional modern hangars over the next decade.
The IAF has the largest footprint, with 150–170 hangars across commands. Modernisation is underway with climate‑controlled bays for Su‑30MKI and Rafale, and new depot‑level facilities at Nagpur and Kanpur. The Army operates 40–50 hangars at bases such as Pathankot, Leh, Jodhpur, and Ranchi; many are small or temporary, and the Army is expected to need 20–30 new hangars as its fleet expands. The Navy maintains 45 hangars just on its ships for helicopters and jets, and around 15 across Goa, Arakkonam, Kochi, Vizag, Port Blair, and Karwar. It is projected that 15–20 additional corrosion‑resistant coastal hangars will be procured. The Coast Guard has 14 and often runs short on maintenance.
A senior Indian Navy official told The Core it was essential for helicopters to be parked in hangars with doors on ships, “to ensure metallurgy does not exceed the limit of salt deposits.”
No One’s Responsibility?
Despite the scale of India’s fleet growth, there is still no strong regulatory push for hangar development. The aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), has technical standards for hangar safety and design, but no policy that mandates hangar capacity, prioritises land allocation, or fast-tracks approvals. AAI’s Single Window Clearance system exists on paper but moves slowly.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation’s (MoCA’s) MRO policy focuses on customs and taxation, not hangar infrastructure. Hangars remain outside the core regulatory agenda, treated as optional add‑ons rather than essential aviation assets.
When fleet growth outstrips hangars and engine shops, no single body is responsible. DGCA can ground aircraft but cannot compel airports to build capacity; MoCA can encourage MRO development but doesn’t mandate it; AAI can lease land but isn’t accountable for national sufficiency. And on record, MoCA has not been formally pressed to explain this structural gap, leaving India’s maintenance shortfall effectively unowned.
A Policy Reset Long Overdue
Hangar projects in India are most often slowed by airport‑operator land control, high or shifting lease terms, and overlapping approvals from MoCA, DGCA, BCAS, and state agencies. Major airports like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai have seen MRO proposals slip because land is prioritised for terminals or commercial use, while AAI airports such as Nagpur, Jaipur, and Kolkata have faced lease‑term and classification disputes.
These bottlenecks typically add two to three years to project timelines and keep airlines dependent on overseas MRO, sustaining India’s $1.5B annual outflow.
Fixing India’s hangar deficit requires a national, policy‑driven reset: a unified hangar strategy, mandatory inclusion of hangars in every airport master plan, and a single‑window system that cuts through DGCA–AAI–state overlap. States must provide contiguous airside land with long‑term lease clarity and incentives that make MRO infrastructure investible.
At present, India has very little real contracted capex for new hangars, especially at AAI‑run airports, where most projects remain stuck at the land‑allocation stage. The only meaningful, funded investments are at private airports: GMR Hyderabad’s Rs 350–400 crore expansion, IndiGo’s Rs 1,000‑crore Bengaluru MRO, and AIESL’s Rs 150–200 crore in selective retrofits across Mumbai, Nagpur, and Thiruvananthapuram.
Private airports and airline‑run MROs are now the main engines for new hangar capacity — provided land, leases, and approvals move faster. If India intends to end reliance on foreign MROs and build a self‑reliant aviation ecosystem, hangars must be treated as core aviation assets, planned and funded with the same urgency as terminals and runways.
