Not too long after rival airline Air India placed a record making order of planes from Boeing, Indigo is also in talks with both Boeing and its current supplier Airbus to order more than 500 passenger jets.
If this goes through, it would break the industry record set by domestic rival Air India.
Buying from Airbus
Indigo, which is India’s largest airline, has until now exclusively purchased narrow-body jets from Airbus.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said last month that the airline was close to ordering several hundred planes from the planemaker.
Negotiations to keep renewing Indigo’s fleet have expanded to include mid-sized wide-body jets.
Eyeing both planemakers
This has sparked a contest between Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner and the upgraded Airbus A330neo.
IndiGo is comparing the A320neo with the Boeing 737 MAX as it weighs a major new order for narrow-body jets.
The split between wide- and narrow-body jets was not immediately clear.
Permission to wet lease
The civil aviation ministry has given Indigo permission to wet lease up to two aircraft in order to operate flights to the United States and Canada.
Under a wet lease arrangement, planes are leased along with the operating crew and engineers.
Typically wet leasing is allowed for short periods to address supply constraints and ensure that airfares do not surge significantly.
Codeshare agreement
In February, IndiGo began using the wide-body Boeing 777 on the Delhi-Istanbul route for the first time.
It is expanding into Europe through its partnership with Turkish Airlines, which is irs codeshare partner since 2019/
A codeshare agreement refers to an arrangement between airlines that allows passengers to seamlessly transfer from one operator’s flight to that of another by using the same flight number.
In a joint filing by Turkish Airlines and IndiGo with the US Department of Transportation, the airlines have asked for “expedited approval of the application” as is standard practice.
Access to US destinations
If accepted, IndiGo will be able to sell flights to Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Newark, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.
After initially launching with 20 destinations, the arrangement has steadily seen expansion to more destinations within Europe.
Indigo already has codeshare agreements with other airlines such as Qantas or Air France – KLM.
