India\u2019s budget carrier IndiGo has launched its flight on the Delhi-Istanbul sector and announced to use its expanding fleet of A320neo and A321neo aircraft to connect more Indian cities to countries such as China, Vietnam, England, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
William Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer of IndiGo, said here on Wednesday, \u201cWe are looking very seriously into other points in South East Asia, notably the obvious ones of Vietnam and Myanmar. We also want to operate shortly to Saudi Arabia on the west side.\u201d\u201cWe are seriously interested in getting in China as soon as we can. We are still selecting precise destinations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIndia operates only five flights from here to China per week, whereas China operates 42 flights to India per week. It\u2019s basically time that we start readdressing that balance. I am convinced that there is a huge amount of traffic in India-China axis. We have not yet tapped that,\u201d Boulter said.The airline plans to add 125 A321neo aircraft in its fleet over a number of years. In 2019, it will receive 20-25 of these aircraft from Airbus, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Boulter said, \u201cOnce we get more A321s, we will do longer routes.\u201d A321neo aircraft has the capacity to carry around 230 passengers while A320 neo carries around 180 passengers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Delhi-Istanbul flight is being operated in A321neo aircraft having 222 seats, Boulter clarified that the flights to China would be based on A320neos.Talking about IndiGo\u2019s plan to connect Delhi to London, he said, \u201cWe are still hoping to operate to London this year. We haven\u2019t chosen yet what the midpoint is going to be whether Baku or Tsblisi or Istanbul.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe had some slots in Gatwick airport last winter but they have lapsed. So, we are again looking at which airport we can operate to in the UK. It\u2019s not yet confirmed. We are very keen to get into the UK market this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe also have a plan to put A321 aircraft domestically because in slot-limited airports in Delhi and Mumbai and increasingly, other airports too, A321 gives you that additional capacity,\u201d Boulter said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Delhi-Istanbul flight plans to connect 20 forward destinations using the codeshare pact that was signed between India\u2019s largest airline and Turkish Airlines on December 21 last year. Codeshare pact allows passengers to travel on a single ticket on flights operated by the partner carrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Boulter said Delhi-Istanbul is a \u201cstrategic route\u201d and the permission for six forward destinations had already been received by the respective countries\u2019 governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have got six in place but we expect the others to be approved over the next few weeks. And they will be in your system for sales as IndiGo destinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOnce the Pakistan issues are gone away, which we hope they will, then this Delhi-Istanbul flight would be our longest flight operated by A321 aircraft,\u201d he said. Pakistan has closed its airspace since the Indian Air Force carried air-strikes on a terrorist camp in Balakot in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IndiGo\u2019s Delhi-Istanbul flight was supposed to be direct with around seven-hour journey. However, as Pakistan airspace remains closed, it halted at Doha for refuelling, increasing the total journey time to around 11 hours. \u201cWe are not in a position to announce what would be the product changes. But there will be a number of changes–in terms of food, drinks and some comfort-related opportunities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s budget carrier IndiGo has launched its flight on the Delhi-Istanbul sector and announced to use its expanding fleet of A320neo and A321neo aircraft to connect more Indian cities to countries such as China, Vietnam, England, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia. William Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer of IndiGo, said here on Wednesday, \u201cWe are looking very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57579,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57577\/revisions\/57579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}