INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
'One of the best things we have going for us is geography,' IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta said.IndiGo, India's largest private sector airline,
turned optimistic about new non-stop international routes on its single-aisle A-320/A-321 series aircraft
In an exclusive interaction with TheIndianSubcontinent, the airline's chief executive officer (CEO) Ronojoy Dutta expressed that it may
operate profitably on the new routes with the mentioned fleet."One of the best things we have going for us is geography
Our aircraft - our single aisle aircraft can go up to seven hours
So from Delhi, we can go all the way to Moscow, Tel Aviv, places like that
From Mumbai, we can go to lots of places in Africa
From Chennai, we can go to Indonesia
From Kolkata, we can go to Beijing
So if you look at the circle that surrounds us in our narrow body aircraft, we are all the way from Moscow to Tel Aviv to Nairobi to Manila
That's a huge circle," he said.Here are the edited excerpts from the interaction with Mr Dutta:How non-stop international travel on new
If you ask how do people get to these places today? Well, they all go one stop
So you want to go to Africa
Guess what, you've got to go to Doha and change planes
You want to go to Kazakhstan, you go to Dubai, you want to go to Manila, you go to Singapore
Now we are saying we will go there nonstop
So it's a very rich geography, which is being served through one stop carriers and we will go nonstop with a low cost carrier."Whether
IndiGo will operate widebody aircraft (they presently operate only single aisle jetliners of the Airbus A-320 family)?"Absolutely ..
The next phase is near seven hour range
very intense in the near future? We have the Tatas - looks like they're bidding for Air India
So there'll be Air India, Vistara, Air Asia, they'll probably be rationalized in some way
There's a Jet Airways too, on the horizon
So the competitive landscape is going to get very intense
So what do we do about it? Well, we're going to focus on our strengths
Our number one, and our biggest strength is that we are one of the lowest cost airlines in the world, our cost structure keeps getting
better over time because we burn less fuel with the new engines
The second is we are in a world class airline
And look in terms of on time performance
pre COVID, we were doing 1,500 departures a day
Back in May, we were doing about 350 departures a day
So we really went down sharply
Fortunately, since then, we've been building back up
And right now we're doing about 1,150 departures a day
Just as importantly, international [aviation] is gradually opening
But a few countries have started doing bubble flights
So all in all things have improved dramatically."Current status of domestic aviation sector: Still in mess?"From a financial health
standpoint, we are not particularly concerned that oh my god, we're running out of money
But I don't think we are in the red zone category by any means
And so we are fairly optimistic about the future
We've gone through a very bad period
But whether it's near term or long term, I think the future for IndiGo is quite bright."
