by The Indigo Flight 6E0031 will tear down the runway at Mumbai airport on Tuesday at 4.25 a.m. and climb up through the Suppy Summer Air at the beginning of its 10-hour trip to Manchester. After landing around 10 a.m. Manchester, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner will start its return trip – flight 6E0032, and in India’s commercial capital at 1.55 a.m.
Never heard from Indigo? What kind of wearer is that? Should you fly it? The note is in these early start and late information times. It is India’s leading budget airline, the Ryanair of the subcontinent.
Indigo started flights in 2006 and had already dominated the domestic Indian market with almost two thirds. It starts flights to the Middle East, Asia and Africa – it offers 2,300 flights a day, national and international – and now takes the fight to the large European airlines.
“We are on the way to becoming a global aviation player,” says Indigo boss Pieter Elbers, former managing director and president of KLM, the Dutch flag bearer in an interview in his office in Delhi.
The Manchester flights, which will operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, follow on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays directly from Mumbai to Amsterdam with similar flight times. The tariffs on both routes will begin around 426 GBP in the economic return and the return of £ 870 in Stretch, Indigos Business Class. “We will offer very competitive tariffs,” says Elbers.
The services from India to Copenhagen and Athens are planned for later this year, with other long -distance routes being transferred to the list of indigo in overseas by the end of this year. Athens and Seoul can be served by the new Airbus A321XLR aircraft, the narrow body-long distance jet, which can fly for up to 11 hours.
Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners, which were rented out of the Nordic Atlantic, will raise the inexpensive transatlantic player that flies from Gatwick, the Western European routes of Indigo until it receives its own long-distance jets from 2027. It has ordered 60 Airbus A350-wide aircraft.
The use of Norse’s Jets is good news for passengers, as they have a spacious premium chard cabin with 56 seats that Indigo opened as an indigo stretch. There are 282 seats. The A350 from Indigo will contain a brand new stretch cabin.
The service on board the flights to Great Britain will be better than what Norse currently offers. Both the economy and the stretch passengers are offered free hot meals, and those in Stretch receive free alcoholic beverages. The meals for business travelers will be vegetarian by default. A checked bag is contained in the flight of flights from and to Great Britain. Nordic fees for checking in a bag.
The India-UK market is very competitive, with Air India, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic already offer direct connections. The golf bearers – Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad – fly over their hubs in Golf from Golf from Great Britain to several cities in India.
Elbers, who took on his new role in 2022, believes that he can use a price to attract new business. “We have a huge market and there is a massive chance out there when we keep our costs low and have a tight ship,” he says.
Are BA and virgins too expensive, I ask. “I will have it assessed by consumers,” he says with a grin.
He points out that the number of international trips Indian rises dramatically – two new airports will soon be opened in Delhi and Mumbai, so that there will be space for new airlines. “India has the largest population in the world and will become the third largest economy in the world in the next few years,” he adds. The Indian aviation market is the third largest in the world in relation to passenger traffic.
Less than a year ago, Indigo started its loyalty program and “we already have three million members,” says Elbers. “All of these people who fly back and forth in Germany will become international. India is in a hurry and indigo too.”
While Indigo will compete with Virgin International, it has teamed up with Virgin in Germany. Virgin passengers flying to Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru can book Indigo flights to 36 domestic destinations on their Virgin ticket. Indigo also codeshares with British Airways.
Elbers chose Manchester because of the large number of people with Indian heritage in northwestern England as an Indigo’s first destination in Great Britain, but also because British Airways no longer flies from Manchester, while Virgin’s and Air India’s services come from London. Birmingham, like Newcastle and Gatwick.
The success story of New Indian Airlines is miserable. No airline survives from the boom in the nineties. Jet Airways, Kingfisher and broke together first. Indigo is different.
Thanks to “incredible cost focus”, as Elbers puts it, it has fixed financial foundations. While Air India continues to increase losses, Indigo reported record profits of USD 31 million (262 million GBP) in the fourth quarter of March 31, supported by a capacity increase of 21 percent compared to the previous year. For the entire financial year, the net profit was 849 million US dollars.
Today, Indigo leads almost 120 million passengers per year to 91 domestic and 43 international destinations are more passengers than Air France Klm. After America’s southwest and Europe’s Ryanair, it is the third largest cheap wearer in the world. Elbers hopes to attract 200 million passengers a year by 2030.
The current fleet of Elbers is 410 aircraft and it has ordered more than 900 new aircraft-Airbus A321 and A320 short-distance jets and the Langstierhorse Airbus A350. It is the largest order book in aviation. “We will get a new plane every week until the next decade,” he says.
Unfortunately there is a dark cloud on the horizon. The latest Air India crash has pointed out the security record of Indian airlines. Elbers is not drawn directly on this topic, but says: “The entire indigo family is in solidarity in this very difficult time and combines with our colleagues in Air India.” Preliminary results of the crash investigation team are expected later this month. It remains to be seen whether the tragedy has an impact on the sky-high-high ambitions of Indigo.
