The owner of IndiGo, the top airline in India, InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, revealed on Friday that it is thinking of ‘wet leasing’ aircraft in order to meet the growing demand for air travel and the associated delays in the delivery of new aircraft. In a ‘wet lease’ arrangement, the lessor supplies the aircraft and the crew while continuing to be in operational control of the flights. Pieter Elbers, the new CEO of IndiGo, disclosed that the firm has been extending some of its current leases and postponing the return of aircraft after the release of the airline’s second-quarter loss report.
A potential wet leasing operation is ‘another piece that is under discussion today, and we are still in the last phases of defining,’ Elbers added. Both locally and internationally, the demand for air travel has grown to levels that are quite comparable to those witnessed prior to the Covid epidemic.
Due to high fuel costs and currency exchange losses, which caused its deficit for the July to September period to deteriorate, IndiGo said it was hopeful about returning to operational profitability in the upcoming quarter. The airline estimates a capacity gain of around 25% over the same time last year, as measured by the number of available seats per kilometre. In addition, it maintained its prediction of a 13–17% increase in capacity for the current fiscal year.
Elbers stated that ‘in the years to come, we will build on our solid (domestic)foundations with broader worldwide goals’. In addition, rupee-related foreign exchange losses were 12 billion rupees ($145.88 million) over the course of the three months, up more than three times from the same period previous year, according to IndiGo.
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