In October 2015 Pipistrel was awarded a contract for production of 194 trainer aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF), Indian Navy (IN) and National Cadet Corps (NCC) for different applications. This was the world’s largest single contract for the delivery of light aircraft to date.
Graduation ceremony at a Naval Base in India at the end of training.
Deliveries began in 2016 (with first shipment of aircraft for the Indian Ministry of Defence, third batch of Garud delivered to Indian Navy) and on 20 September 2019, the company’s Indian partner Skytec Solutions revealed that the last batch of the 194 aircraft had been successfully delivered to the end user customer by Pipistrel.
CEO of Pipistrel India presenting a Garud aircraft model to a base commander after delivery.
Pipistrel flight instructors with Air Force and NCC instructors after the completion of flight training at an air force base
The contract also included training of a large number of technicians and engineers from all three branches of Ministry of Defence. Training was conducted by the Pipistrel Academy air school from Slovenia with their own instructors along with the help of their Indian partner Skytec Solutions.
Group photograph of one of the batches of technicians and engineers after the successful completion of their training.
The part of the contract concerning delivery is thus concluded, but the customer support, guarantees, servicing and delivery of spare parts will continue for a long time. During the next 15 years,a large number of Indian military pilots and NCC cadets will be trained on the Pipistrel aircraft.
The deliveries were made to 85 locations, where the Indian team assembled the aircraft in the presence of end user representatives of the Ministry of Defence, tested them in air and handed them over to the customer.
Ivo Boscarol, the CEO of Pipistrel, stated, “At the beginning, many big players in the aviation business warned me that working with India is not possible and we would never bring the contract to the end successfully, but all of us, working together as a strong team, succeeded in achieving our goal. We have proven to our customers, competitors and the entire world that we are capable to carry out even the most demanding contracts. This deal has opened many doors for us in the future.”
WgCdr Sanjay Thapar VM (Veteran), CEO of India’s Pipistrel partner Skytec Solutions, stated, “Winning the contract in tough competitive environment was easy for Pipistrel as they offered the best product at the lowest price. But execution of contract was full of challenges, biggest being large number of delivery locations spread all over India from Srinagar to Trivandrum, Chabua to Naliya and Port Blair in high seas. As a proud Indian and a veteran air warrior, I am happy that India at last has best in class microlight fleet, which will meet aspiration of all users in respect of their expectations from this aircraft.”
This business was one of the reasons that the CEO of Pipistrel, Mr Ivo Boscarol, was invited as a guest to his Excellency, President of India Mr. Ram NathKovind during his official visit to Slovenia. His Excellency congratulated Ivo for supplying the 194 aircraft to the Indian Armed Forces and emphasised that he was proud that India had such a strong partner in Slovenia.