India’s maintenance problem is usually described as a shortage of buildings. The numbers published this week suggest it is closer to a shortage of people, and that distinction changes who wins from the next decade of Asian maintenance spending.
Aviation Week forecasts more than 2,100 deliveries to Indian operators between 2027 and 2036, with the annual rate averaging 278 aircraft in the closing five years of that window. Against that, only about 20 per cent of India’s maintenance demand is currently met inside the country. The remaining four fifths travels to Singapore, the Gulf, Southeast Asia and, for some engine work, Europe. Every hour of that travel is paid for twice, once in ferry cost and once in revenue the aircraft is not earning.
Air India and SIA Engineering Company signed a memorandum of understanding in July 2026 to explore joint airframe and engine work in India. When the two returned to the subject on 22 September, the emphasis had shifted. The framing was no longer purely about facilities but about training and retention, with both sides acknowledging that Indian licensed aircraft maintenance engineers continue to leave for better paid positions in the Middle East. Air India Group alone expects more than 500 aircraft from Airbus and Boeing. An airline taking delivery at that rate cannot plan around a workforce it does not control.
Singapore offers the useful contrast. Singapore Aero Engine Services is investing S$242 million, about US$180 million, to add roughly 50,000 square metres to an existing 60,000 square metre footprint, lifting capacity on the Rolls Royce Trent family by around 40 per cent. The expansion completes progressively from 2026. The figure that matters, though, is the other one attached to it: 500 technician and engineering positions to be filled by 2028, with the company signalling further hiring beyond that. Singapore is not simply pouring concrete. It is buying a decade of trained labour, and it is doing so in the same catchment from which Indian engineers are being recruited away.
For airline treasuries, the consequence is a maintenance cost line that behaves less like a fixed schedule and more like a commodity price. Heavy checks and engine removals performed offshore are settled in dollars, while the revenue funding them is earned in rupees. Slot scarcity lengthens turnaround times, and a longer turnaround means more spare engines leased at market rates or more aircraft standing idle. Carriers that have modelled maintenance reserves on historical shop visit durations are likely to find those assumptions optimistic through the second half of this decade.
The picture for lessors runs in the opposite direction, at least for now. Demand for CFM56 overhauls has proved more durable than forecasters expected, with retirements arriving later than modelled and the peak spending window on that generation of engines stretching further out. GE Aerospace and Safran have both signalled that the anticipated decline in shop visits has yet to show up in a convincing way. That supports residual values on ageing narrowbody equipment and on the engines themselves, but it also tightens the same shop capacity that Indian carriers are queueing for. A lessor holding GEnx or Trent assets has a related interest: redelivery conditions are only enforceable if a shop slot exists when the aircraft comes back.
Private equity buyers looking at Asian maintenance platforms should read the Singapore and India signals together. Valuations in this sector have tended to rest on hangar bays, tooling and approvals, all of which can be bought or built within an investment horizon. Licensed engineers cannot. Training an airframe or engine specialist to independent certification takes years, and the certificate is portable the moment a rival offers more money. A platform whose competitive position depends on wage arbitrage in a market where wages are converging is a thinner asset than its capacity figures suggest. The more defensible targets are those with established training pipelines, institutional relationships with polytechnics and technical schools, and a retention record that survives contact with Gulf recruiters.
What to watch over the next two quarters is whether the Air India and SIA Engineering discussions produce a joint venture with a named training commitment attached, and whether Indian policy follows with anything that changes the economics of staying. Tax treatment and customs handling of parts have improved, and they helped bring some airframe work home. Neither addresses the salary gap. Until it closes, India will keep building hangars that Singapore and the Gulf staff.
The investment case for Asian MRO is intact. The assumption that capacity translates into throughput is not.