London Calling Indigo

IndiGo, India’s largest airline by market fleet and market share, has been facing a question of sorts that we have discussed in the past. IndiGo wants to head to London, becoming a long-haul player of time. Still, it knows its current model of cutting and pasting the domestic passenger experience on international flights does not work for trips longer than 4-5 hours, as the Istanbul experience shows. In the meanwhile, they’ve been filing and receiving slots in London. Still, they did not make a move forward on the plan, and Jazeera Airways of Kuwait has stolen a march over them, offering sort of one of the first low-cost experience between India and London on a one-stop flight.

Recently, IndiGo said that they had put a hold on their plans to go to London on the narrowbody A320family, stating that they realise that a one-stop flight won’t work for customers. However, they did not quite wait very long to move forward on other plans. The IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta gave a flurry of media interviews, a week after the Qatar Airways codeshare signing.

One of the statements he made was that IndiGo was expected to fly everywhere except the Americas, given it is hard to figure a business case for that stage length. Some of his quotable quotes were,

Deliveries of the A321 XLR begin from 2023-24. This aircraft can fly nonstop to western Europe but can’t do London (or other destinations in UK) nonstop apart from maybe Delhi. When we launch London, we will look at places like Mumbai and Bengaluru also. For that we will need wide body aircraft which are certainly not ruled out by the recent 300-aircraft order.

Wide body needs a business class. As of now, the business class market exists more for flying into India than flying out. We are creating corridors (for flow of passengers to create transit feed required to fill up these planes) by expanding the in the east and far east. Filling 350-seater wide body requires that and this something all big airlines globally have done.

However, it looks like IndiGo is not working on a timeline after the A321XLR arrival to launch their new flights to London. A few things have happened already. For instance, for the Summer 2020 schedule, which starts last Sunday of March 2020, IndiGo already had requested but was denied 42 slots per week at London Heathrow.

Brutal Fight for London Airport Slots

At London Stansted, where IndiGo was holding 28 slots, it lost those slots but has now acquired 14 slots, i.e., seven slot pairs in Summer 2020 schedule. But while the airline went from 6216 seats for 28 slots (14 flights) which were 222 seats one way in S19 to 4774 seats for 14 slots (7 flights) in S20 which is 341 seats one way. So, IndiGo’s CEOs statement matches the action on the ground.

However, IndiGo will perhaps again head to Stansted as they have been declined slots at LHR. IndiGo can always buy a slot pair (or few) at Heathrow from another carrier, but I don’t think that shelling out millions of dollars for a slot at Heathrow fits their business plans.

But not just that, here is something co-incidental that happened around the same time. IndiGo said they wouldn’t buy, but rather lease aircraft for the first few years to see how their experiment with London goes.

Hong Kong Airlines, which went into a fund crunch, and hence stopped accepting aircraft, had 5 A330-300 aircraft on order, which were put in storage at various places, including the Airbus assembly facility in China. These have now been showing some activity again. Have a look at one of these, MSN 1907, which took the first flight in November 2018.

These look like some probable candidates for IndiGo to take up as their experimental frames for starting these flights. These can be delivered to the original leasing company, and IndiGo could lease these from them. This would also mean that IndiGo won’t have to wait a few years to place an order and get some A330 aircraft into their fleet, while Vistara collects their 787 aircraft and launches flights to London. IndiGo will also need a business class cabin for trips that long.

Conclusion

IndiGo may be closer to launching their London flights than most people think. While everyone we talked to is tightlipped about the aircraft and we could be totally off base, the fact is that IndiGo now has widebody slots at London Stansted and that reflects the new thinking inside IndiGo about London flights. And it is not something that they are wondering about. They are moving forward with the plans. London is an important market for Indian carriers, and IndiGo is trying to make it there at the earliest. We had made a business case for IndiGo to fly the A330 a while back. So, you may see this plaque coming true soon.

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