It’s an exciting time for aviation in India. A little over a year ago, India’s largest airline ordered wide body jets for the first time. The airline has now doubled its firm order, before even taking delivery of the first jet.
Continue reading: India’s IndiGo Orders 60 Airbus A350s To Fuel Long Haul Ambitions
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
@ BiggusDickus -- Indeed, not surprising, since the IATA AGM is being held in India this year, and it's normal for a lot of announcements to come from airlines in the host country.
Sheer greed and overexpansion that think will turn a super efficient/profitable business into downfall as happened to most lccs in the us
One is starting to get the feeling that India and its airlines are about to emerge strongly onto the world markets …. watch out AA!
Thus far Indigo's international routes are typical LCC services. They are slowly adding business class lite (IndiGo Stretch) to some domestic routes. It will be interesting to see if they take the competition head-on or they will continue to offer LCC like flights internationally with these 350s.
Can we see them become more like jetBlue?
Hopefully they're successful compared to India's carriers of past such as Kingfisher and Jet Airways. Kingfisher had ambitious plans especially with the A380.
Oneworld can certainly use an Indian carrier as it's a major hole in their network aside from China, Africa and Latin America.
And that reminds me, have you or other readers ever been on the latter two? I remember both of them used JFKs Terminal 8.
@Ben - to your point on A350-900 vs A350-1000, I think there’s a growing demand for premium travel esp long haul ex-India. UA’s 787-9 to DEL has Polaris flying full consistently. This may have been played into the aircraft choice.
Ben, placating the like DickusHead will never work.
Slapping the numpty down and putting it back in its box is the only solution!
They have 65 percent of India’s domestic market. And they run an on time operation. Pretty sure JetBlue would like to be more like IndiGo than the other way around.
Puts a lot of pressure on Tata and SQ to do more than put out a new ad. Now they actually have to deliver a good product if they want Indians to continue to choose them for long haul in 2030 forward. Let’s see who can take delivery of more new birds over the next 5-7 years and if AI can completely transform its culture.
Are you talking about Jet and Kingfisher? Jet did fly out of JFK and EWR. Kingfisher's plans never materialized. They did apply for slots at JFK, but then they collapsed right around that time. Their flashy owner is a fugitive now, I believe.
I was talking more on service and amenities rather than operations.
jetBlue is defined as a low-cost carrier, but with full-service amenities.
Indigo does not offer JetBlue like amenities. Their best attribute is reliability. They are adding Indigo Stretch business lite service domestically. I am told that Indigo Stretch serves cold meals because their aircraft are not yet fitted with ovens.
Fair but on a busy route like DEL to BOM that takes all of two hours isn’t the first thing you are looking for a reliable operation? Indigo is delivering that. Do they have bad legroom? Sure but not exactly the average height of a Nordic population either.
Completely agree that one world looks flat here. Suggests a bit of a lack of outward vision from BA/IAG.
When I access your page or boardingarea from chrome on a laptop, it really slows down and it seems like some changes in the ad is causing the issue. do you have any idea? I don't have the same issue on mobile devices or other pages with chrome in my laptop (even more heavy loaded pages). Anyone else experience the same?
I wonder if they would introduce a flatbed product similar to ZipAir or maybe even Condor
@lucky, there is a lot of capacity that is going to be coming online in the next decade in India and the Middle East. Presumably a decent chunk of that capacity will be used for flying to/from Europe.
But most European airports are fairly slot constrained, making me wonder where Qatar, Emirates, Indigo, Air India etc. plan to send all their new capacity within Europe. Sure there is probably some room for further growth but at some point I would imagine the major European Airports will run out of slots/capacity.
And it doesn't seem like Europe is running to build more runways for their airports either which is the most logical explanation of where increased expansion would come from.
Perhaps I am missing something here?
"I can’t help but wonder if a decade or two down the road, this could also lead to changes in the business model at Gulf airlines."
Possibly. But if the Indian airlines stick to only (or even primarily) offering long-haul services from New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, then it won't force the Middle Eastern carriers to change all that much, since the other major cities will still be faced with a connection.
For example, last I looked, Hyderabad-Dallas is the largest non-DEL/BOM market to the USA from India, and a sizable one at that. But if Air India or IndiGo were to launch DEL/BOM to DFW, they'd have no competitive advantage over Emirates or Qatar, as anyone coming from Hyderabad would still have to make a connection regardless.
The range of the a350-900 is 15 000 km up to 17 000km in the long range version....distance between those cities is just 11 000km so it can be flown direct.
It just struck me how much the Indigo branding/livery looks like bmi. It's uncanny lol. I look forward to living out my days watching certain airlines collapse and say, hey, famous last words.
"I can’t help but wonder if a decade or two down the road, this could also lead to changes in the business model at Gulf airlines."
I'm curious to see this as well. But I think Emirates and Qatar have evolved enough now that they aren't as dependent on traffic to the Indian Subcontinent as they were in the past. They would need some changes. But Dubai and Doha are now much more internationally known cities. Those airlines have put their cities on the map. Nowadays, both of those airlines' are also dominant or well established in many other connecting markets as well. I'm sure they will lose passengers. But Emirates future does not consist of A380s, and they will have to adopt lower capacity aircraft. With natural growth over the next couple decades, I think the growth of Indian airlines will just result is less exponential growth for Emirates and Qatar. Qatar more recently diversified their typical passenger types. They were heavy on passengers to the Indian Subcontinent up until the pandemic, where their strategies and decisions allowed them to also grow market share in more diversified markets. My first time flying QR was in 2018 from JFK, and almost all of their passengers were flying to the Indian Subcontinent at the time. Not so much nowadays.
It will be interesting to see how the smaller Gulf Carriers do, like Oman Air and Gulf Air. I'm most intrigued about how this will impact Riyadh Air. Will they be able to grow enough market share before AI and IndiGo establish themselves?