Hawker Siddeley HS 748 HAL 748

India took an interest in the 748 before the first British prototype had even flown. The licence agreement came together remarkably fast: the first Indian-assembled aircraft flew on 1 November 1961, only months after the first British production machines were delivered. Manufacture was set up at Hindustan Aeronautics' Bangalore works.

HAL built both the Series 1 and the Series 2 and completed close to ninety airframes, the great majority for the Indian Air Force and the remainder for the flag carrier Indian Airlines. Within a decade of the programme's launch India had become the type's single largest market, and Indian Airlines its largest civil operator anywhere with more than two dozen aircraft.

The Indian military aircraft served as a testbed for every kind of task: troop and freight transport, paratroop dropping, medical evacuation, electronic warfare, maritime patrol and navigator training. The final batch of twenty for the Indian Air Force was delivered as the Series 2M, with an enlarged freight door. One airframe was rebuilt as an airborne early warning testbed carrying a large dorsal radome, the Airborne Surveillance Platform, in a programme that ended tragically with the loss of the aircraft and its entire crew.

The Indian 748s outlived the British ones. When the UK authority withdrew the HS 748 type certificate, the measure did not reach HAL-built aircraft, which hold a separate certification. They continue in Indian Air Force service pending replacement by the Airbus C295.