Funnily enough Fanny, you won't catch me disagreeing with much of what you've written. I am well aware of what India can do, both in Aerospace and Automotive, although my direct experience is in the Automotive sector. By no means should they be underestimated - they have some pretty fantastic technologies available to them and hats off to them for it!
But I do get tired of people comparing wages of Indian engineers and saying this gives them a cost advantage - yes it does, but not nearly as much as people believe for reasons I stated earlier. And when that situation changes, they will be as valuable as any Western-educated/brung-up engineer too - top Indian talent is hugely mobile, as you'll have spotted in the various places. Bottom line is there is no excuse why Australia can't do some of the stuff India, China, Czech Republic, Brazil etc are doing.
...except there is an excuse of course, which is the terminal Australian disease. Like a child of wealthy parents who can run back to daddy for more money, we can always dig a bit more dirt out of the big hole and sell it to more innovative and industrious people. Nowadays, of course, we don't just sell the dirt, but also the controlling interest of whole companies digging the dirt.
Which leads me to the point I'd prefer to make and the biggest disappointment of seeing Indians buy GA and AA, is that, yet again, our nation loses control of key companies and the business decisions go elsewhere, not to be made in the interests of growing Australian business, but to further the aims of some foreign power base.
Sorry, whilst I applaud what GA and AA do (and will continue to do), the relinquishing of control of these businesses is a huge and short-sighted loss to Australia and its future, compared to what could happen.
A