IndiGo to fly across Indian borders from September

New Delhi: Offering an enticing fare for the first 25,000 seats, low-cost, no-frill carrier IndiGo Airlines will commence international operations from 1 September with the launch of its Delhi-Dubai daily flights. The budget airlines will launch its Delhi-Singapore flight on 8 September, Delhi-Bangkok on 15 September and Mumbai-Bangkok and Mumbai-Dubai flights on 2 October. [caption id=“attachment_25661” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“IndiGo Airlines gets ready to fly abroad from September 2011. Adnan Abidi/Reuters”]  [/caption] “We are launching our international operations to Dubai, Singapore and Bangkok from this September. Keeping the stiff competition in mind, the all-inclusive return fare for any of the destinations would be Rs 9,999 only,” IndiGo chief executive officer Aditya Ghosh said. The carrier has also applied for flights to Dhaka and Bangkok from Kolkata, which is likely to begin next year, he said, adding that there are options of operating more flights on international sectors as 34 percent of the route authority from Indian side were yet to be utilised. On Indigo’s expansion plan, Ghosh said there are around 400-odd commercial aircraft and keeping in mind the population versus aircraft ratio there is need for 60 aircraft per month. The country’s second largest airline, which has a present fleet of 39 aircraft, has placed an order of 180 more Airbus 320 to Airbus Industrie. IndiGo, which currently has 4,056 employees, is planning to hire over 200-odd pilots, 900 cabin crew members, 500 to 600 aircraft engineers in the next 18 months, Ghosh said. On the domestic sector IndiGo is working on operating flights to Ranchi, Vizag, Mangalore and planning to connect Kolkata with Indore and Raipur in the near future. PTI