Pieter Elbers – IndiGo is stretching its wings |

IndiGo is now expanding and stretching its wings as it looks to fly not only to more new international destinations but also to connect more Indian cities to international destinations. “We are expanding to different cities. If Singapore Airlines can fly to more than ten destinations in India, why should we limit ourselves as an Indian carrier to only fly from one destination in India to Singapore? We now fly to (from) seven (cities in India),” says CEO Pieter Elbers. He spoke on Monday evening during a select media interaction, for which AirInsight was invited. This comes a few days after the carrier reported a profit for Q2 of its FY24. Elbers added that the airline announced two more new destinations in India - one in Odisha and one in the southern part of India last week, taking the total domestic destinations to which IndiGo flies to 85. During the course of the interaction, Elbers also announced that IndiGo is looking to add flights to Medina (Saudi Arabia) and Bali (Indonesia) in this fiscal year but the dates for the launch have not yet been finalized. He added that the airline is constantly looking for new opportunities and new challenges, but these were the two that IndiGo had confirmed. Incidentally, the launch of the Bali flight will see IndiGo operate to two destinations in Indonesia from India. The airline launched a non-stop service from Mumbai to Jakarta earlier this year. Elbers also made it clear that internationalization, as he calls it, is very much part of IndiGo’s strategy moving ahead. Edited excerpts from the interview: AirInsight: 2023 was the first year when IndiGo started going international and you launched at least six routes. Will this pace continue in 2024, 2025, 2026? Pieter Elbers: “You know what we have said earlier is that we will continue our internationalization. The opportunity to not only have more destinations but also and probably even more so new routes being operated. Today, we are operating a little over 400 domestic routes, and a little over 100 international routes.” “You'll see that number going up in the years ahead. I wouldn't pinpoint today on a specific number. Moreover, we do not know some of the precise market developments. We don't know precisely how quickly Saudi Arabia will develop. We don't know how secondary markets in Thailand could develop. But I am very encouraged if that's the right word, by what I see happening now in some of the markets like Tbilisi and Uzbekistan. We find an enormous appetite.” “I think the Indian consumers are as diverse as the country is. We still find Indian travelers who go for the first time abroad. They would like to go to Phuket on their first international trip. We also find our Indian consumers who have been to Phuket, they have been to Bangkok, they have been to the Gulf. So now they want to go to Tbilisi.” “I think that we see that reflected in our numbers. I see it as an enormous encouragement and 60 to 65 percent of the world population lives within the range of our aircraft today. I think in that range we still have a lot of opportunities to both find new destinations and new routes.” AirInsight: Is Russia off the table as long as the Ukraine crisis continues? Elbers: “I don't like to speculate on what destinations are on or what are off. I also think whenever international positions are being taken, then what position is the Indian government taking on that?” AirInsight: Can you say something about how the Airbus A321XLR you have on order will further develop your international and domestic reach? Elbers: “We have the XLR on order and the XLR will come in late 2024 calendar year, early 2025. We are awaiting some more precise detailing of that and clearly, the XLR will help us to expand our range.” “You know when IndiGo started in India. Gradually, our first international flights were to the Middle East. We started to Southeast Asia a little bit and today you still see that the Gulf is a big part of this. Then from Southeast Asia today we have started going further out to Central Asia.” “A natural evolution of that would be when the XLR comes that can take us further into Europe. Places like Athens could be reached at that point in time. It can take us further into Asia, where places like Seoul can be reached. Without pinpointing precisely how many destinations we will have and when we will open them, the opportunity is enormous if you act on that. Your range out of Kolkata is very different than your range out of Chennai.” “And if we use it well, India’s geographical advantage with North-south, East and West then Ahmedabad or Mumbai will again have a different scope. So all that geographical scope of India is really helping us build on that network and the XLR can do a great job there.” “We recently started flights from Mumbai to Nairobi which is typically a distance which from Delhi is a bit far. With the XLR, a Delhi Nairobi service comes into the picture. There are more places in Greece one could think about. Today, Qatar Airways is operating in Mykonos and Santorini. Why would an Indian carrier not be able to, why should an Indian carrier, Indian consumer per se transfer somewhere else? We can serve those markets ourselves. But again, we haven't taken the decision on precisely where and how yet.” “Suddenly, you see that with the XLR we get a whole new scope of opportunities which we don’t have today. I think Indian consumers have the appetite to explore international destinations. I think that's something which is just about to start. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg. So the XLR will not only stretch our reach further into Asia, further into Europe, but it will also stretch our reach, if I may use that word, within India itself and stations abroad.” “For the range, of course, we await the final capabilities from Airbus (which depends on the restrictions from additional safety measures of the Rear Center Tank – RS). But it also depends on what's going to be the precise configuration. In earlier discussions, some of you have asked if we are going to introduce business class, if are you going to do this, that, and the other. We haven't decided that yet. The exact configuration will have some impact on the range.” AirInsight: Do you rule out cities like London or Paris? Elbers: “I do not think on any question I would rule out anything.” AirInsight: Are you also planning to add widebody aircraft to fly to the US? Elbers: “You know we have said earlier we are not ruling out anything for the future. I think all our focus today is to make sure that the order book which we have with 970 airplanes still to be delivered, which is massive, there's no airline in the world having so many planes to be delivered.” AirInsight: Are adding more international destinations helping IndiGo? Elbers: “One of the things was internationalization in the second quarter when we launched new flights to Baku, Tbilisi, Almaty, Tashkent, Nairobi, and Jakarta. Traditionally, IndiGo may have been focused a lot on what we were doing in the Gulf region, but now we are stretching our wings.” “Internationalization really came to fruition in the second quarter. And it's not only the connections, it's also the connectivity they create. For example, now we see people flying from Tbilisi to Delhi, connecting to Phuket. We see all kinds of new traffic flows emerging, which is a good thing and helps us in the vision that India should become an aviation hub and not only a big market.” “The other part of that internationalization strategy is not only to focus on Delhi and Mumbai but also to be focused on other parts of India. So, Hyderabad-Colombo and Hyderabad-Singapore have been added. We have added Ahmedabad to Jeddah and Ahmedabad to Abu Dhabi. I think we are well on the way to making sure that an Indian airline is part of the global aviation landscape and that's a very encouraging part.” AirInsight: How is the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofan issue affecting the airline? What steps are being taken to address it? Elbers: “We have taken a whole range of mitigating measures. We have extended leases, and we have kept some of the planes in our operations. We have inducted a couple of new ATRs. We have recently arranged for another eleven damply aircraft to do that. They are all narrowbody (the aircraft being taken on damp lease).” “We are pretty confident that this range of mitigating measures will help us to continue our capacity guidance. I think IndiGo is really in a good position because we have a new plane coming in every week and that new plane is providing us with the opportunity to grow or the opportunity to replace aircraft.”

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