In terms of their aircraft manufacturing industries, Canada and India are more different from each other than any other possible pair consisting of a developed and an emerging economy. Canada is one of the World's leading aircraft suppliers, yet its position is jeopardised by previous Brazilian and on-going Russian, Chinese, and Japanese entry. To the opposite, India is expected to become the market with highest demand for new aircraft. At the same time, India is lagging behind in establishing its national aircraft manufacturing. Large scale cooperation between Canada and India would allow the former to gain access to a key market, without necessarily raising another competitor. Through cooperation with industry's main players from Canada, India could significantly improve its relative position in design, supply of components, and MRO (maintenance, repair, and overhaul). Given anticipated favourable outcomes for either country, virtually non-existent Indo-Canadian trade and cooperation within the sector are puzzling. Our findings attribute missing Canadian commitment to the Indian market to the innovation paradigm in the industry. Aircraft manufacturing is a closed system industry with proprietary product architectures, and subject to strict safety and legal regulations. The industry hence tends to incremental rather than radical innovation, and follows technology-availability push rather than market-demand pull approach to innovation. The innovation paradigm in aircraft manufacturing is most appropriately characterised as hierarchical; in this hierarchy, the way to the market leads for any innovation ultimately via a prime contractor, thus inducing hierarchical cooperation along the whole value chain. This is detrimental to taping into Indian market, which is growing in demand, yet constrained by infrastructural and income gaps. Indian domestic aviation requires aircraft with unique set of characteristics, hence radical rather than industry's usual incremental innovation. Negligible involvement of Indian suppliers into value chains of Canadian OEMs is attributable to a set of factors such as general market gravity; lack of bilateral agreements regarding free trade, intellectual property, and aviation safety; lack of Indian AS9100 certified suppliers capable of delivering higher-value inputs; and despite usual claims to the contrary, actual shortage - and not abundance - of qualified labour on Indian side. As Canadian leading prime contractor, Bombardier plays a key role in either direction. Current focus on integration of Mexican suppliers seems not to allow the company to stretch its global value chain to India. Given its simultaneous strategic focus on C-Series program, Bombardier equally appears to be lacking resources and determination to lead the Canadian aircraft manufacturing industry to India.