IndiGo Airline Operations: Limited impact on operations due to closure of Pakistan airspace, says IndiGo CEO Elbers, ET Infra
Highlights Pieter Elbers said only 34 out of 2,200 daily flights were affected by Pakistan's airspace closure, with Almaty and Tashkent routes temporarily suspended.
Impacted flights are seeing additional flying time of 20–30 minutes, primarily due to rerouting, leading to a marginal increase in fuel costs.
Despite the disruption, IndiGo maintained over 2,050 daily flights with an average domestic load factor of 83% during the period.
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NEW DELHI: The impact of closure of Pakistan's airspace to Indian airlines will have limited impact on the operations of India's largest airline IndiGo, according to the management of the carrier.The airline's Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers in a post earnings conference call with analysts on Wednesday outlined that due to the closure of airspace, out of 131 destinations, two have been suspended--Almaty and Tashkent. Overall, 34 flights have been impacted for which rerouting has been undertaken.'So, we have 2,200 daily flights and there we have a total of 34 being affected within the range of 20 to 30 minutes of additional flying time, which, of course, there is an impact financially when it comes to bringing in additional fuel. But if you look at the overall scheme of things at IndiGo and the size of the operations, the impact for us is relatively limited,' he added.The management highlighted that during the four-day limited skirmish between India and Pakistan between May 7 and 10, operations from 11 airports in the northern part of India were suspended for a period of eight days, leading to cancellation of around 170 daily flights.'Operationally, the impact was limited as we continue to operate more than 2,050 daily flights with strong domestic load factors of around 83 per cent on the remainder of the network during that very same period,' said Elbers.The Pakistan government closed the country's airspace for all civilian and military operated flights from India. The step was undertaken after India undertook a series of measures, including diplomatic downgrade of its relations with Pakistan after militants belonging to The Resistance Front, a proxy of Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, killed 26 tourists in Pahalgam town of Anantnag district in Jammu & Kashmir on April 22.
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