Saras and NAL Projects : Updates & Discussions

Although it did not turn out well at all, they did manage to make one plane prototype...

Mahindra pushed aside the original engineers of prototype and brought in their own engineers with zero knowledge on aircraft design and manufacturing. Chinese instead learnt the know how before sidelining and that's why they are successful in most of the things. Indian engineers are very good but they overestimate their know how on critical technology without any research on it. And when the real challenge comes, they simply break and then government has to import.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Aniruddha
Mahindra pushed aside the original engineers of prototype and brought in their own engineers with zero knowledge on aircraft design and manufacturing. Chinese instead learnt the know how before sidelining and that's why they are successful in most of the things. Indian engineers are very good but they overestimate their know how on critical technology without any research on it. And when the real challenge comes, they simply break and then government has to import.
Dont make up stuff in every thread. Australian team was driving the project. They failed because of impossible indian civil aviation regulation. Even today no one attempted it again for the same reason.
 
Dont make up stuff in every thread. Australian team was driving the project. They failed because of impossible indian civil aviation regulation. Even today no one attempted it again for the same reason.


By the time the team could refocus on the Airvan 10, Mahindra's team of new engineers had made fundamental changes that started the aircraft on a trajectory that GippsAero couldn't arrest. The original engineers found themselves sidelined as the corporate machine went to work on the product.


Intended to be an aircraft that was a simple step-up for pilots already flying Airvan 8s, the design concept was drifting away from its raison d'etre. Mahindra's team didn't seem to understand what the aeroplane was all about.


"Mahindra was very hard-nosed," another former GippsAero engineer, Gary* laments. "The influx of engineers were from larger projects. GippsAero's engineers had a lot of knowledge, but they were pushed aside.

 
  • Like
Reactions: ShiroBarks
This article is about GA8 Airvan, the user you replied was talking about C-NM5 prototype. Two different aircraft.

it also spoke about CNM5

“GippsAero is proud to have produced the prototype of the C-NM5 in partnership with our parent company Mahindra Aerospace,” CEO Terry Miles said at the time. “The construction of a working prototype in 10 months is an outstanding achievement for our team, and a testament to the manufacturing skills that we have nurtured within our organisation here in regional Victoria.”

The C-NM5 was then parked in the development hangar (dubbed "Dreamland" by some inside the company), where it has become the ultimate hangar queen and an obstacle for people to walk around. No further work was ever done.

By the time the team could refocus on the Airvan 10, Mahindra's team of new engineers had made fundamental changes that started the aircraft on a trajectory that GippsAero couldn't arrest. The original engineers found themselves sidelined as the corporate machine went to work on the product.