Indigo to connect to new destinations

Low fare airline IndiGo, riding high on a bottom of the pyramid approach, is planning to expand its operations in Kolkata. The fastest growing airline is planning to connect to new destinations such as Agartala, Thiruvanthapuram, Kochi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. The company is also planning to start its international operations from Kolkata in the next 300 days to locations like Singapore, Bangkok, Dhaka, Malaysia.

“Kolkata is a very important market for us. Our load factor out of Kolkata is 87 per cent, where as out national average is 81 per cent. So we want to give more focus on this market and expand our operations. In fact, eastern region itself is a very important market for us. We have flights operating in north eastern states, Bihar, Agartala etc. So we have decided to increase flight frequencies from Kolkata to already existing destinations like Ahmedabad, Chennai etc and add new destinations like Jaipur, Kochi etc,” said Aditya Ghosh, president, IndiGo.

The company is also planning to launch flights from Coimbatore to Chennai and Delhi.

Also on the anvil are plans to start international operations — south east Asian countries — from Kolkata. “We will very soon get the in-principle approval to fly international. The idea is to attract the huge tourist population, which fly to these places every year,” Ghosh said.

At present, the company is operating 207 flights every day across 22 destinations. IndiGo, with a market share of 16.4 per cent as per company figures, also looks to expand its fleet size “We will have 34 aircrafts in our fleet by the end of this calendar year. By next calendar year we are planning to have a fleet of 48 aircrafts” said Ghosh.

IndiGo has managed to grow its net profit more than five times to Rs 550 crore in 2009-10. The unlisted airline cited lower costs and higher revenues but did not furnish further details. “There is a substantial growth in revenues. We also added more aircraft and as a result of this our available seat kilometres measures (ASKMs) have gone up by 28 per cent,” Ghosh said. IndiGo’s revenue increased 35 per cent to Rs 2,664.5 crore for the year.