Affordable airfare to remain one of IndiGo's fundamental pillars: Pieter Elbers, CEO
Pieter Elbers, CEO, IndiGo, tells ET Now about the airline's plans going forward. Edited excerpts:
ET Now: Give us an idea of the airline's expansion strategy...
Pieter Elbers: Over the past five-six weeks we have added new flights from Mumbai, we have started operations from Mumbai to Nairobi. We have started Mumbai to Jakarta and as recently as this weekend we have launched flights from Delhi to Tashkent and Almaty.
So we have expanded from a little over 20 destinations to 32 now.
Next month, early October, we will start flights into Hong Kong. And we have plans when the Airbus 321XLR would be coming in to further expand our wings internationally. And in fact it is not only new destinations, but it is also a lot of new routes.
I mean, in August itself, we started new flights from Ahmadabad to Abu Dhabi, from Goa to Abu Dhabi, from Ahmadabad to Jeddah.
So we keep expanding our international footprint, both by new destinations as well as new routes.
Do you think airfares are going up this festival season?
There are always seasonal fluctuations. Did you try to book a hotel already at the peak season? Did you see what is the price of that? So there is always going to be fluctuations of airfares.
I think for Indigo, one of our very fundamental customer promises is affordable fares, and that is what we keep there. So yes, there will be seasonal fluctuations, like there always are.
We also see prices of fuel going up. But at the end of the day, the Indigo customer promise — affordable fares — will remain a very strong pillar of the airline.
While you took the board's permission to buy 10 A321 neo planes, you have taken some planes on lease. What is the plan as far as these new aircraft are concerned? What possible timeline is
