Mumbai leads IndiGo’s international charts

IndiGo has made repeated statements on increasing its focus on international operations. However, the domestic operations continue to be around 90% of its total operations by capacity. The last few months have seen IndiGo explore the Blue Oceans strategy by adding flights to Jakarta, Nairobi, Almaty, Tbilisi, Baku and doubling down on existing destinations like Phuket and Bangkok on the back of visa free regimes for Indians. One of the focus areas for IndiGo is also the International to International connectivity and the bank structures that are slowly taking shape at both Delhi and Mumbai. 

Here is a look at how IndiGo is placed with its international network, in terms of destinations connected and departures planned to get a sense of where IndiGo is focusing.

Mumbai, not Delhi, leads the International charge

While Indigo has a bigger network and departures out of Delhi (DEL) for domestic, paradoxically it is Mumbai (BOM) that has the most departures and a higher width of destinations like Delhi. While some stations like the CIS states are covered exclusively from Delhi, others like Jakarta and Nairobi are covered exclusively from Mumbai.

Again, while Bengaluru is Indigo’s third largest domestic network (both departures and destinations), it is Hyderabad that is Indigo’s 3^rd biggest international station with 14.5 daily departures connecting 14 destinations. Chennai takes 4^th place with 10 daily departures to 8 destinations. Indigo connects both Middle East and southeast Asian destinations from Hyderabad – and one wonders whether this would become Indigo’s preferred hub for International to domestic transfers in South India or is this as is currently a point to point network. If Indigo is indeed to build a hub here, then it will need to ramp up domestic connectivity as well as “bank” the international departures into specific time slots to allow for better connectivity.

Indigo’s longest route on its international network is Mumbai and Delhi to Istanbul which are served by leased high capacity 777-300 ER aircraft leased from Turkish airlines. The longest routes (over 6 hours one way) on the 320 family of aircraft are Mumbai to Jakarta, Delhi to Hong Kong and Kozhikode, Hyderabad and Delhi to Jeddah.

Indigo also has a number of 1 flight international stations typically offering services to the Middle East. These include stations as diverse as Amritsar, Chandigarh, Surat, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Kannur which would all be targeting high point to point traffic. Recent additions however have largely been from the top 3 airports (Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad) signalling intent to drive hubs and funnel traffic from other domestic and international destinations through these 3 cities.

Indigo has also cleverly timed newer flights to connect better with their wider international network – for instance Mumbai to Jakarta is timed to connect well with Mumbai to Jeddah in both directions. Similarly flights to Dhaka and Kathmandu from Mumbai and Delhi connect well in both directions to the gulf flights from these cities capturing more diverse traffic. Indigo also has a strong bank of domestic departures at Mumbai’s international terminal (T2) that allows for relatively smoother international to domestic connections. However a challenge for Indigo remains the spread of domestic departure over different terminals, at Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Could this be advantageous to Hyderabad ?

Future evolution of International network

Indigo has stated an ambition of progressively scaling up its international network and spoken of an accelerated ambition over the next few years, particularly with the 321neo XLR version joining its fleet sometime 2025 onwards. This will open up 7 to 9 hour routes for Indigo (depending on what configuration it selects for these aircraft) and will allow it to open up many more city pairs across its network. Will it go for the tried and tested routes out of Delhi and Mumbai to Europe, Africa and East Asia or will it look beyond to markets like Hyderabad and Bangalore and try new routes from there ? Will it revive its mini east facing hub at Kolkata which had been connected pre covid to a wider spectrum of East Asian destinations like Hong Kong & Guangzhou. What are its hub ambitions specifically to carry more international to international traffic via India ? How will it navigate the challenge of multiple terminals at the key metros ?

It will be fascinating to see how the Indigo team solves these puzzles and builds out its network in the future and if it can stick to its guns or needs tweaks.

About the author: This guest contributor is an aviation enthusiast whose day job is in consumer goods. A frequent flyer (1300 + flights logged) and a data geek with a love for analyzing airline networks and their evolution. On X (Formerly Twitter) and other platforms as @BOMLHR

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