Quite simply, the line item costs are not really relevant unless considered on a unit cost basis. You can pay a pilot $25k/month, but if you get 100 hours of flying out of him you have a better unit cost for that pilot than by paying him $10k/month and only getting 20 hours out of him. When taken on a unit cost basis (CASK or CASM), Indigo's operating costs have been superior to the other carriers in the domestic market space.

I spend my professional life working with airlines around the world and analysing their performance. I saw Kingfisher's train wreck coming long before it became fashionable to jump on that bandwagon. I have not seen anything from Indigo that implies a similar house of cards. To the contrary, I have consistently seen positive indicators from them. Granted, I have not examined their books or operations closely, but information like this gets around very quickly in the relatively small international airline community.

Is it possible that this is simply a product of a PR machine? Perhaps, but the underlying model is a lot more solid than Kingfisher. To put it simply, Kingfisher could never have been successful with their business model. Indigo however can be successful if they execute theirs right. That alone should be enough to derail any meaningful comparison between them.