India’s largest domestic airline, IndiGo, is on an expansion spree and announced to connect various countries in the Central Asia and Africa via direct flights. Many of these routes announced by IndiGo Airline are not connected directly by any airline, or at least in some cases, by an Indian airline. The budget air carrier aims to dominate the international air routes like its untouched supremacy in the domestic market. Once these routes are operational, IndiGo will be connecting a total of 32 international destinations compared to 26 routes before the announcement was made early this year.
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International Flights Launched in 2023
The airline is embarking on a “massive” international expansion plan as the air carrier has now announced to connect Nairobi in Kenya and Jakarta in Indonesia with direct flights from Mumbai last month. On the other hand, IndiGo also announced to connect Tbilisi in Georgia, with direct flights from Delhi yesterday. With the launch of these three flights, the total cities connected by international flights of IndiGo stand at 29, while the airline connects 107 destinations overall.
Upcoming International Flights
IndiGo Airline announced to launch 6 new routes in 2023, taking its tally from 26 to 32 in 2023. While direct flights to Georgia, Indonesia and Kenya have already been announced, the brand will later launch flights to Hong Kong, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Among these, the flights to Hong Kong will be restarted as the route was closed due to Covid-19.
The rest three will be new routes, taking the total tally of the airline to 32 international cities and 110 overall. In a statement issued earlier, IndiGo said that they will launch direct flights from Delhi to Baku, Azerbaijan in August and in September to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. “Delhi will get connected in August to Tbilisi, Georgia & Baku, Azerbaijan and in September to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Almaty, Kazakhstan,” IndiGo said in a release.
International Expansion Plans
The expansion comes at a time when there is a rising demand for international travel from, to and via India, as well as the government’s efforts to develop an international aviation hub in the country. IndiGo said it will be adding an “impressive 174 new weekly international flights between June and September 2023, including new destinations, routes, and frequencies”.
“The addition of these exciting new destinations, new direct flight routes, enhanced flight frequencies, and strategic codeshare partnerships, will help us expand our footprint across four continents with Africa and Central Asia being penetrated for the first time. With this expansion in our network, we will now be directly touching 32 international destinations (up from 26), next to our 78 domestic destinations,” IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers said.
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Indian Airlines Flying International
IndiGo Airline is competing against Air India and Vistara to dominate the international air routes. Once all the routes are launched as announced, Indigo will become the second biggest Indian airline to operate on international routes, just behind Air India. However, in the passenger carrying capacity, the airline surpassed Air India in the Q1 2023. Next in the line is Air Vistara, which largely operates to the European nations.
Go First, which used to operate on Middle Eastern routes has filed for bankruptcy and grounded all its planes since last 2 months. On the other hand, the Air India Express connects mostly to Gulf nations only. Among these, Air India will merge with Vistara and once that happens, it will be the biggest international airline in India.
