Recruitment of skilled workers, continued automation and digitalisation of processes, and strategic planning are vital to the continent's efforts over the next two decades.

Indian passenger numbers on domestic routes increased by 6.12 percent to 161.3 million in 2024.

It sounds like a lot, but compared to China, it’s relatively modest in comparison. Over the 2025 Spring Festival travel season (Jan 14-Feb 22), 90 million domestic-bound passengers took to the skies, following on from a record-breaking 2024, in which the Chinese civil aviation industry handled 730 million passenger journeys – an annual increase of 18 percent.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that the number of middle-class people in China stands at a similar level: close to 700 million following an 8.7 percent rise in 2024. Together, China and India accounted for over half of the 113 million newly-middle class people in the world in 2024.

The pressure is accordingly on both countries’ civil aviation sectors to keep up with the soaring demand over the next two decades – not just the airports and airlines, but also its MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) operators, which will face fierce global competition in the aerospace aftermarkets.

Led by China, which is projected to control the world's largest MRO market by 2043, projections favour Asia to dominate, but the continent’s MRO industry still faces significant challenges to achieve this forecast.

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How Asia can fulfil its potential as the capital of MRO by the 2040s