The Hindu Business Line : IndiGo hopes to fly to 30 cities by 2010

Low-cost domestic airline IndiGo has said it will not fly to places where its A320s cannot land and has identified only 30 destinations for its airline.

"There are not more than 30 cities in which A320s can land. We will stick to that," the IndiGo President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr Bruce Ashby, told newspersons on Tuesday.

This rules out any plans to acquire smaller aircraft to fly to even towns across the country.

IndiGo currently flies to eight cities. It expects to fly to 30 cities by 2010.

Mr Ashby also said that the airline is not looking at any particular market share for itself over a period of time. "Our goal is to be affordable, nice, on time and profitable," he said. He also ruled out any plans to offer discounted fares.

"We started off by not offering discounted fares and we have been proved right as our flights are nearly full," he said.

"We are trying to encourage passengers to book early to avail themselves of lower fares instead of offering discounted or free seats on our flights," Mr Ashby said. He said nearly one-third of the airline's tickets are sold through travel agents.

IndiGo expects to breakeven between 18 months and 24 months and by that time expects to have a margin of around 10 per cent. "This is pretty good for a start up airline even by international standards," Mr Ashby said. He said if the airline manages to get a seat factor of 80 per cent with an average of each seat being sold at Rs 3,000, "turnaround would happen anyway."

At present its passenger load factor is around 78 per cent. He said, currently, 97 per cent of the airline's flights depart within 15 minutes of scheduled departure time.

The airline has ordered for 100 A320s of which 40 will be delivered by 2010.

All the aircraft have been purchased through operating sale and lease back arrangement.

This model allows an airline to buy aircraft from the manufacturer and sell it to a lessor who in turn leases back the aircraft to the airline on a monthly rental basis.

The lease period ranges between three years and 12 years.