After Air India, IndiGo will now buy 20 new aircrafts, preparing to expand on international routes.

The aviation sector in India is flourishing very fast. You can guess this from the fact that after Tata-owned Air India, now another airline IndiGo is also trying to add new planes to its fleet soon. India’s largest domestic airline is preparing to buy 20 wide planes for its international operations. For this, the process of negotiation with the companies making the airline’s aircraft has also started.

This will be the first time that InterGlobe Aviation, the company that operates the Indigo airline, will order a wide-body aircraft. The airline currently operates a fleet of Airbus 320 and smaller ATR aircraft. IndiGo currently also operates a fleet of Boeing 777 aircraft on wet lease from Turkey between India and Istanbul. Wet lease means leasing the aircraft along with the crew.

Preparation to buy aircraft going on for almost 1 year

Indigo will include around 15-20 wide-body aircraft in its fleet. The airline has been in discussions with aircraft makers Airbus and Boeing for at least a year. Now it is expected that the order will be placed this year itself.

How big is the fleet of Indigo at present

Established in 2006, Indigo has been the cheapest airline ever to operate flights with the help of narrow body aircraft. About 222 passengers can sit in it. As of December 2022, its fleet consisted of 302 planes, including 288 aircraft on operating lease and 14 owned. The Gurugram-based airline’s fleet comprises 160 Airbus A320neo, 23 A320ceo, 78A321neo, 39 ATR and two Airbus 321 freighter aircraft.

IndiGo aims to add several new planes to its fleet by 2030, including 480 jets, large number of narrow body aircraft and a few turboprop jets. This decision of Indigo will prove helpful for the government. The government is asking airlines to order wide body planes and connect destinations in Europe and America directly to India. Earlier, Air India had placed an order for a record 470 planes in February.