IndiGo, the country's largest airline by market share and also in terms of fleet, will soon be joining the big league of airlines with 1,000 daily departures, becoming the fifth Asian carrier to do so.
According to Capa (Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation) data for the week, the top three Asian airlines operating over 1,000 daily departures are all Chinese and the fourth is All Nippon of Japan. While China Southern Airlines operates 2,178 flights a day, China Eastern Airlines has 2,083 daily services and Air China operates 1,333 departures a day. The Japanese national carrier All Nippon Airways comes fourth with 1,062 flights a day. And Indigo will soon be joining the 1,000-per day departures milestone from December 23.
The country's largest carrier, with close to 40 per cent market share and a 144-strong fleet, today announced 47 new service (19 new sectors and 28 additional flights), connecting key domestic cities and some in the Gulf region from December 23. The airline said from December 21 it will connect Lucknow and Hyderabad with Sharjah and 16 new domestic routes. It also opened bookings from today on the new routes.
The airline, known for its on-time performance, said it will begin flights between Lucknow-Sharjah, Hyderabad- Sharjah, Lucknow-Srinagar, Hyderabad-Ranchi and Lucknow- Dehradun, among others, from the third week of December.
The new schedule will also see additional frequencies connecting Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai with other cities like Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Kochi respectively, it added. Announcing the soon-to-be-achieved milestone, IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh said, "A thousand daily flights is a milestone that no domestic airline in has achieved so far. As we approach this mark, we thank our over a 100 million customers who have made this journey possible." Some of these new flight are already effective from November 2, the airline added.
