IndiGo plans to add dozen aircraft over next 6 months

New Delhi: IndiGo, India's largest domestic airline by market share, plans to add two aircraft a month to its fleet over the next six months-beginning next week-in a bid to beef up its operations and take on rival Tata Sons start-ups AirAsia India and Vistara.

Leased from Tiger Airways, the dozen planes will mark the biggest expansion IndiGo has undertaken in a six-month period since its inception in 2006. The airline has typically added about 10-14 aircraft in a year to its fleet.

"The first ones will start joining from next week," said Aditya Ghosh, president of IndiGo, in an interview.

IndiGo has a fleet of 84 aircraft. Having inducted all 100 aircraft it ordered first in 2006, it sent back 16 that were on six-year term leases-common for most IndiGo aircraft.

Till October next year, therefore, the airline did not have any aircraft delivery scheduled from Airbus.

To bridge this gap, the airline has leased nearly 12 planes from Singapore-headquartered Tiger Airways with a configuration of 180 seats. The aircraft have been leased for about three years and will start arriving at the Delhi airport from next week.

The move will help IndGo take its fleet strength to as many as 96 aircraft by April, after which Airbus NEOs, the new fuel-efficient version of Airbus A320 aircraft, will start joining its fleet.

With 96 aircraft, the airline will be just short of half the size of America's budget airline JetBlue and Europe's EasyJet, each of which have nearly 205 aircraft. RyanAir has 301 and SouthWest 632.

IndiGo already dominates the local sky by a wide margin over its nearest rival.

In October, IndiGo had a 31.9% market share, Jet Airways (India) Ltd 20.5%, Air India 19.5%, SpiceJet 17.3%, GoAir 8.5%, AirCosta 1.1% and AirAsia (1.1%).

On Thursday, AirAsia India said it was adding Pune to its network. Daily direct flights from Bengaluru to Pune, Pune to Jaipur and return flights will commence on 17 December.

AirAsia has three aircraft in its fleet.

The SpiceJet fleet, on the other hand, has shrunk to less than 47 aircraft from 57 last year. Some more Boeings are likely to go in what the loss-making airline has termed "fleet restructuring".

Vistara has two aircraft at the Delhi airport and is awaiting a Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) licence to start flying.

Air India, with the largest fleet of 120 aircraft including Dreamliners and long-haul Boeing 777s, has said it will add more Airbus A320s and ATRs to beef up local operations which have been falling as it expands to international cities like Sydney, Moscow, Melbourne, Rome and Milan.

Centre for Aviation (Capa) South Asia chief executive Kapil Kaul said new firms were likely to become aggressive early next year. "We see 20-25 aircraft additions by April. New additions will compensate the temporary capacity reduction by SpiceJet and add further capacity... We expect a tougher Q4 in spite of lower fuel prices... A lot depends on how fares play in Q4," he said, adding: "New entrants will be aggressively greeted, especially in Q4."

IndiGo has 430 more aircraft on order for delivery over the next several years. The first 180 will be delivered over a period of seven to eight years from 2015 and the remaining 250 between 2018 and 2026, according to Ghosh.

While many of these planes will replace existing aircraft, some will be used for expansion.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.