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Delhi-based low-cost airline IndiGo hopes to operate 900 daily flights by Diwali from 600 that it is operating now, Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, IndiGo’s President and Chief Operating Officer (COO), said on Thursday.
“We were allowed 1,500 flights in the summer schedule. So, the goal is to reach about 900 daily flights by Diwali, which will be about 60 per cent of what we are allowed. But I cannot give an exact figure (of daily flights by Diwali),” the COO told BusinessLine in a telephonic interaction, adding that IndiGo should be able to achieve this goal if everything goes right.
Optimism in the air
On Wednesday, the government enhanced domestic flying to 60 per cent of what the airlines were operating prior to the lockdown. Before this announcement, airlines were allowed to operate only 45 per cent of their pre-Covid flights. IndiGo was able to achieve 37 per cent of its pre-Covid capacity, largely because the number of flights that were allowed to land in airports varied and States had different rules for quarantine. Wolfgang added that there were indications that some airports were preparing to meet the 60 per cent new cap set by the government, which indicates optimism in the market.
International flights
Asked whether IndiGo will look at operating commercial flights to international destinations — Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines — to which it was allowing repatriation flights, Wolfgang said the airline will have to study this carefully, adding that when international commercial flying restarts, the airline will look to “re-establish the network it had in South East Asia and West Asia.”
In response to a question on whether the airline will look at starting operations to London, a destination to which its competitors, including Vistara, have started repatriation flights, Wolfgang said, “We cannot close our eyes to it. We want to be prepared. We are analysing it. When the time is right we will come.” At the moment, IndiGo does not aircraft to fly non-stop services between India and the UK. Wolfgang was clear that IndiGo’s main business will be scheduled commercial flights, pointing of the 600 scheduled commercial flights, charter and cargo are only about 10 per cent of the flights. “If you take it as a business (charter and cargo) it is a smaller amount,” he said.
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