IndiGo, the largest airline in India, on July 30 said that it plans to offer its business class product named IndiGo Stretch on routes to Singapore, Bangkok and Dubai, prioritising these markets over the domestic market, the airline's chief executive officer Pieter Elbers said after the airline announced it first quarter results for 2025-26.
The IndiGo Stretch product was launched by the airline in August 2024 and IndiGo had announced that it would induct 45 aircraft by the end of 2025 and offer IndiGo Stretch on 12 metro routes within India, starting with Mumbai-Delhi — the busiest route in India, from November 2024. The airline, since then, has started these flights on Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Bengaluru, Delhi-Hyderabad, Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Bengaluru routes.
IndiGo will operate its Airbus A321 planes with IndiGo stretch business class on flights to Bangkok, Singapore and Dubai in the coming months. The airlines plans to deploy its new two-class Airbus A321neo aircraft on daily flights between Singapore and both Delhi and Mumbai from August 9, senior executives from IndiGo told Moneycontrol on the condition of anonymity.
IndiGo is the only low-cost airline on both Delhi and Mumbai routes from Singapore, competing with full-service carrier Air India and Singapore Airlines to and from both cities. The airline currently operates 59 weekly flights to Singapore from nine cities in India including Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Tiruchirappalli.
Similarly, the airline plans to first offer its IndiGo Stretch product from Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru to Dubai from August 13, and plans to introduce the business class product from other Indian cities in a phased manner, sources said. IndiGo operate over 120 weekly, direct, flights to Dubai from 13 cities in India, and operates around 250 weekly flights to the United Arab Emirates from 19 Indian cities.
IndiGo currently operates 25 aircraft refitted with business class configurations.
As part of its post earnings conference call IndiGo's CEO Pieter Elbers also said that IndiGo currently has around 40 aircraft grounded due to Pratt & Whitney engine issues unchanged from the end of March 2025.
He added that recent trade agreement between India and UK will likely boost travel between the two countries, and IndiGo is well placed to take advantage of the same.
The airline's management also said that 3.8 million passengers have onboarded on IndiGo Blue Chip loyalty programme.
Speaking on the airline's financial performance in the April-June quarter of 2025-26, the airline's management said that the closure of Pakistan airspace since April 2025, and the crash of Air India flight AI 171 along with other geopolitical disruptions around the world led to many unforeseen disruptions in the last quarter.
"IndiGo witnessed a significant rise in cancellation in April and May due to the India-Pakistan military escalations and other geo-political tensions," the airline's chief financial officer Gaurav Negi said.
Similarly, Elbers added that the crash of Air India flight AI 171 forced the cancellations of 100 flights between June 12-14 and closure of Pakistan airspace since April caused IndiGo to cancel 30 weekly flights in April and May 2025.
The airline's management also said that so far in 2025 IndiGo has taken delivery of only 16 planes in the first six months of the year, as compared to 2024 when it took deliveries of 58 aircraft.
"IndiGo took deliveries of 8 new aircraft in Q1FY26," Negi said, adding that IndiGo is not keen on growing its capacity aggressively in Q2FY26 as demand is likely to be subdued during the period, the airlines will grow its capacity by single digits in Q2FY26.
Negi added that IndiGo has seen a revival in its yield since June and expects expects yields in Q2FY26 to remain unchanged from Q2FY25, after the airline's yields fell to Rs 4.98 in the June quarter from Rs 5.24 a year ago.
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