IndiGo operates its highest ever single-day domestic ASKM

IndiGo, the country’s largest carrier by fleet and domestic market share, operated 227 million available seat kilometres (ASK) on Monday, November 8. This is the highest single-day domestic ASK in the airline’s history, surpassing the previous best of 225 million ASK recorded on March 16, 2020, the airline’s CEO Ronojoy Dutta said in an exclusive interaction on Wednesday.

The airline is also just 35 flights short of its all-time daily domestic record by flight count. The capacity deployment in flights and ASK is an indication of the demand returning back in the industry.

International plan is evolving

The airline has an edge in its international operations strategy as it has been given great flexibility in deciding the order book for A320neo/A321neo and A321XLR aircraft with manufacturer Airbus allowing it to shuffle its preferences. In the last two months, IndiGo switched its order for four A321neos orders to A320neo aircraft, which is more in line with the airline’s demand projection.

Asked if the airline could consider a small business class cabin for the A321XLR or a product different from the existing one, Dutta said the airline is exploring all possible product options for the plane. This includes thinking about having ovens on board, the ability to charge devices and seats different from the ones on offer.

The four-corner strategy—four hubs that service certain destinations with feed from other domestic destinations—was also touched upon. The airline plans to make optimum use of the range of its aircraft to ensure that it can use a flight to, say, Hanoi from Kolkata with feed from multiple places across the region while continuing to cater to the origin-destination traffic from Delhi and Mumbai.

Dutta also laid out the initial operating plan for the A321XLR, pointing out that the recent episode of A321neo flights to Istanbul leaving luggage behind in Delhi was a one-off phenomenon due to heavy winds in that season. The airline plans to have a conservative plan to begin with and look for performance characteristics for the flights and then decide the longer flights.

Upbeat about domestic, cautiously upbeat about international

While traffic is picking up to pre-COVID levels, Dutta said restoring salaries to pre-pandemic levels would have to wait for profitability to return first. However, the airline has removed leave without pay for almost everyone with the last set of employees coming out of this policy by December 1. The airline has already restarted hiring with 400 flight attendants and some staff at airports.

With its highest ASK deployment, Dutta is upbeat about domestic flights and is looking forward to flights under air bubble agreements with Saudi Arabia and Thailand in the near future. The airline is also faring well currently on the international flights front, especially to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

IndiGo was losing over Rs 15 crore a day in the last quarter and over Rs 30 crore a day in the previous one. Dutta said the airline is planning flights based on the cash contribution where it would operate if the flight is cash positive, or else withhold capacity deployment. The losses in the past two quarters also stemmed from lower passenger traffic and the cost will be spread with additional flights, he said.

Impact of fragmented operations at Delhi and Mumbai

Being the largest player in the market, IndiGo has split operations at both Mumbai and Delhi across terminals. Dutta admitted that this was a problem beyond the airline’s control and has led to a minimum connection time of 120 minutes for passengers transferring from T1 to T3 or vice versa at Delhi.

The airline is in talks with the upcoming airports at Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra and Jewar in Uttar Pradesh for an integrated terminal.

ATR operations

The airline is happy with its regional services operating the ATR aircraft. Dutta said that despite a higher CASK or cost of available seat kilometre, the airline has been able to open many routes and feed its hubs effectively.

Fares and fleet

While the government has now capped fares for only 15 days, the airline is still holding on to 30 days. Dutta said that this is being done for sectors seeing an uptick in demand and to balance the increased costs.

The airline has seen a stagnant fleet count for a while with about 50 planes and 50 A320ceo—the earlier version of the aircraft—being phased out in a year. By the end of next year, almost the entire A320ceo fleet will be out of service.

Interestingly, with a six-year lease pattern for the A320neo, the first lot would start leaving the fleet by 2022. That could well signal another mega order soon.