Indian Billionaire Rahul Bhatia's IndiGo Steps Up Fleet Expansion Amid Travel Boom
IndiGo—India's biggest airline by revenue controlled by billionaire Rahul Bhatia—is stepping up fleet expansion plans to meet the booming travel demand in domestic and international destinations.
To support expansion plans, the budget carrier has exercised an option to buy an additional 30 A350 planes from Airbus, boosting its fleet of widebody aircraft to be deployed in international routes, Bloomberg reported over the weekend. That's on top of the 30 A350 planes it ordered last year and the six Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners set for delivery next year.
The company aims to expand its fleet by 50% to more than 600 aircraft by 2030, IndiGo said a statement released late last week.
'We are focused on our holistic growth to be able to offer affordable, convenient, on-time travel experience to our customers on a growing domestic and international route network,' Pieter Elbers, CEO of IndiGo said in the statement.
IndiGo plans to start services on 10 new international routes this year, expanding its network to over 50 destinations. It will start direct flights to Manchester and Amsterdam from Mumbai, next month. IndiGo also plans to add flights to Athens as well as Southeast Asian destinations such as Siem Reap, Bali, Ho Chi Minh City, and Hanoi, along with central Asian cities Almaty and Tashkent.
To support its fleet expansion, IndiGo has signed an agreement with Bangalore International Airport to build a 12.5-hectare maintenance and repair facility. This will add to its existing facilities in Delhi and Bengaluru. 'A dedicated MRO facility will give a significant advantage in terms of aircraft availability, greater cost efficiencies and quicker turnaround benefitting the airline,' IndiGo said.
With an estimated real-time net worth of $8.5 billion, Bhatia is among the wealthiest in India. He cofounded the airline with fellow billionaire Rakesh Gangwal in 2006. Following a public falling out with Bhatia, Gangwal resigned from the company's board in 2022, vowing to sell off his IndiGo shares. Last month, Gangwal reportedly sold 115.6 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) of his shares in IndiGo.
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