Tag Archives: Indigo

Venkataramani Sumantran has been appointed as an Independent Director on the Board of IndiGo, for a period of five years. He is currently Chairman and Managing Director of Celeris Technologies and has held this position since 2014. Sumantran has earlier served as Executive Vice-Chairman of Hinduja Automotive, UK; Executive Director of Tata Motors; and Director, Advanced Engineering in GM-Europe, among other roles.

IndiGo has announced that it will start operations to Agra with the launch of a direct non-stop flight from Bengaluru on March 5, under the government’s regional connectivity scheme UDAN, revealed William Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer, IndiGo. Agra will be IndiGo’s 63rd destination and 86th overall in its network, which also has flight services to 23 international airports. The airline already operates flights to and from Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Lucknow and Varanasi. “It gives us pleasure to announce Agra as the 63rd domestic destination in our network. Operating exclusively under the UDAN scheme, the new services will promote trade and tourism in the region through increased mobility,” said Boulter. With its fleet of over 250 aircraft, the airline offers 1,500 daily flights, connecting 63 domestic destinations and 23 international destinations.

Domestic air passenger traffic grew to 14.41 crore in 2019, an increase of just 3.74 per cent compared to 2018, revealed Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).  The domestic air passenger traffic grew by 18.6 per cent to 13.89 crore in 2018. The decline in growth is attributed to the collapse of Jet Airways in April 2019. The passenger load factors of all major airlines – Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir, IndiGo, AirAsia India and Vistara. The domestic air passenger traffic in December 2019 increased by 2.56 per cent to 1.30 crore compared to the same month in 2018. In comparison, the growth in domestic traffic in November 2019 was 11.18 per cent.

Sanjay Kumar, who recently stepped down as COO of Air Asia India, will now be joining as Chief Strategy & Revenue Officer, IndiGo Airlines. Kumar was previously employed with IndiGo Airlines as Chief Commercial Officer till 2018, before his stint with Air Asia. With over 25 years of experience, Kumar has even worked with SpiceJet and erstwhile Sahara Airlines as well. The news has been confirmed by Kumar, who will reportedly be joining IndiGo very soon.

SpiceJet has recorded the highest Passenger Load Factor amongst all the domestic carriers in India, recording a 93.9 per cent PLF for the month of May, according to recent statistics revealed by DGCA. Closely following this number was GoAir with a PLF of 93.3 per cent, preceding IndiGo at 90.9 per cent. Fourth in line was Air Asia with 87.8 per cent, while Vistara recorded 85.6 per cent, which was followed by Air India at a PLF of 85 per cent.

Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) released its statistics for domestic carriers in the month of May 2019, according to which GoAir scored highest in terms of On Time Performance (OTP) with 91.8 per cent, which was followed by Air Asia at 89.1 per cent and IndiGo at 87.4 per cent respectively. Vistara was at the fourth spot with 86.6 per cent and SpiceJet at fifth with 74.4 per cent OTP. Air India was at the sixth spot with 70.3 per cent. The report revealed that domestic air passenger traffic increased by 2.96 per cent in May as compared to last year, after a significant slump in April, owing to Jet Airways ceasing its operations.

The domestic market of India continues to perform strongly, again registering double digit growth over the year to February, according to International Air Transport Association (IATA). China and Russia topped the growth chart with 11.4 per cent and 10.1 per cent year-on-year growth rates respectively. This marks the 54th consecutive month of double-digit domestic RPK growth for India. A generally solid economic backdrop, combined with continued growth in the number of airport pairs have all contributed to this sustained growth performance.

Launching its flight on the Delhi-Istanbul sector, IndiGo has announced to use its expanding fleet of A320neo and A321neo aircraft to connect more Indian cities to China, Vietnam, England, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia. William Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer, IndiGo said, “We are looking very seriously into other points in South East Asia, notably the obvious ones of Vietnam and Myanmar. We also want to operate shortly to Saudi Arabia on the west side. We are seriously interested in getting in China as soon as we can. We are still selecting precise destinations.” The airline plans to add 125 A321neo aircraft in its fleet over number of years. In 2019, it will receive 20-25 of these aircraft from Airbus, he said. While Delhi-Istanbul flight is being operated in A321neo aircraft having 222 seats, Boulter clarified that the flights to China would be based on A320neos. The Delhi-Istanbul flight plans to connect 20 forward destinations using the codeshare pact that was signed between India’s largest airline and Turkish Airlines on December 21 last year. Codeshare pact allows passengers to travel on a single ticket on flights operated by the partner carrier. Source: PTI

IndiGo is set to begin direct daily operations to Istanbul from Delhi and later from Ahmedabad along with other destinations. This was revealed by Emin Çakmak, Chairman, Turkish Indian Tourism Council, at a Turkish delegation meet held in Delhi on February 25. He says, “We are expecting a growth of 25-30 per cent from the Indian market by the end of this year. We have a great co-operation between the tourism and trade industry of the two countries. The potential is huge and now that can be released as more seats will be made available soon.”

Out of the 1123 aircraft that are currently on order for India, a bulk of them are slated for delivery to IndiGo, according to a recent ‘Project Rupee Raftaar’ report by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The numbers are evidence of the optimism and positive outlook for the sector, providing some insights as to the near-term evolution of the market. There are range of new and alternative investment and alliance or partnership structures emerging globally which add a new dimension to the industry, as airlines try to and new and innovative ways to expand their networks and their product offering. In some global markets, the changing industry structure is one of consolidation rather than expansion.