IndiGo has opened sale of its damp-leased 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft. The airline is deploying the aircraft to Bangkok from Delhi to begin with and operations start from March 01, 2025. IndiGo’s CEO Pieter Elbers has said that the airline intends to shift to Europe from mid-Summer. The first aircraft is expected very soon and I would guess it is LN-FNA which is currently in Amman or LN-FNC which is on ground in Oslo for half the month now. Both Norse Atlantic and IndiGo have said that they are working to have more aircraft under this arrangement. Norse Atlantic in its stock market filing in November last year had said that it had agreed to lease two aircraft beginning February with more to follow in September of this year. The deal has subsequently been changed to induct one now with more to follow.
The timings of the flight to Bangkok will be as below
6E1053 DEL1000 – 1610BKK
6E1054 BKK1745 – 2020DEL
There is a slight change in the timings to cater to the increased number of passengers.
What to expect in these aircraft?
Norse Atlantic is a Norwegian low-cost airline, which was born during the pandemic amidst the fall of another low-cost carrier, ‘Norwegian Air Shuttle’. The 787-9 aircraft are in dense configuration with 56 Premium Economy seats, which are 7 abreast with 2-3-2 seating in the front section and standard 3-3-3, 9 abreast seating in Economy with 282 seats, a total of 338 seats. For context, these are 39 more seats than the former Vistara 787-9 aircraft, which are configured in three classes.
These seats have a 43-inch pitch but are not fully flat. The seat width is 19 inches and recline is 12 inches. The touchscreens are 11 inches and the seat comes with universal AC and USB-A pockets. The hard product is better than the pre-refurbished legacy Air India Dreamliners. The Economy class seats have a pitch of 31 inches and are 17.1 inches wide with a recline of only 3 inches. The PTVs come with 9 inches and have a USB-A socket.
IndiGo is selling the Premium Economy product at IndiGoStretch, its new class of service which it has deployed on Mumbai – Delhi route and intends to expand to 45 planes across 12 major metro routes in India. While the domestic flights do not have alcohol service, the addition of IndiGoStretch to international also sees addition of Sula to the offerings. The catering for IndiGo stretch will continue to be from Oberoi Catering Services, same service provider as for domestic.
Why Bangkok?
There are multiple reasons why Bangkok is the first route for a plane which can fly across continents. ACMI stands for Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance. The maintenance aspect from this is crucial and Bangkok is a current station for Norse Atlantic. The airline operates thrice a week to Bangkok from Oslo.
The larger question is why not Europe? A large discussion online talks about availability of slots as the reason. However, that could be just one part of the story. A Schengen or a British visa is a tedious task and not many have multi entry visas with them. Typical holidays are planned in advance since Schengen requires a confirmed ticket to travel. It is thus safe to assume that most holiday makers have booked their April/May holidays by now. Any capacity addition with immediate departure would be challenging to sell in the market. Bangkok, on the other hand, has a free visa on arrival and thus makes it a last minute destination. The incremental seats on offer can be sold at the last minute.
Operations to future destinations in Europe will need time to set up and IndiGo would select such destinations which the A350s will take over in due course of time. The sales and distribution network for a foreign destination is a challenging task as compared to setting up airport operations, which is a fairly standardised process. The selection of destinations will also be on the basis of airlines it may cooperate with like Virgin Atlantic, KLM or Air France on similar lines like it does with Turkish Airways.
In its release in November last year, Norse Atlantic had mentioned a commitment of 350 block hours per aircraft per month being part of the deal. With IndiGo’s Bangkok operations, the figure would come out to be around 250 hours. This is indicative that the future expansion will see points in Europe being balanced by points in South East Asia and an indicator of more points like Singapore coming online for the 787-9 dreamliner.
Network Thoughts
The airline has dropped additional frequencies on Kolkata – Bangkok, presumably to accommodate additional seats on Delhi – Bangkok – Delhi, to ensure that it does not have to ask for more seats. The current quota and allocation of seats between India and Thailand is not in the public domain.
This is good initiation for the route in terms of stability of operations, ability to handle IRROPS (Irregular Operations) and ground time at Delhi, along with crew settling in. However, for an airline which had been so particular about its brand image, the last few years have seen it leave the brand focus with planes in other liveries and inflight configurations and products which are non-standard. Time will tell how these desperate looking measures worked out for the airline.
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