As discussed here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/india...cs-primer.html

Indigo works on the principle of leaseback and churns aircraft every 3 years, so this new order is just replacement of the aircraft purchased in the last batch.

Why they asked to buy widebodies I don't know. I suppose the A330regional (made/assembled in China) probably will make sense in 5-10 years between the metros.

In India atleast there is another model - burn cash (most of it black money) to buy out market share. Spend aggresively on PR to market yourself as a "happening" airline either in the premium space or as Indigo is doing - as a no frills, no nonsense airline! Once the promoters have made a killing at the IPO, who cares where the airline goes after that? Let airline die out - start another one and lather-rinse-repeat! Any of this sound familiar?

6E have a IPO coming in the next year and so need to stay in the news. Their PR team has been working overtime with journos on the aviation beat flogging every tid-bit.

Eerily similar to what I saw in Kingfisher years back! Indeed, many of the guys are the same! :)

+1

I have read a bunch of reports on these lines.. IPO is the major driver here.

i've heard the same thing & they have been very good with their pr....i love the way they spin the whole 'on time arrival' bit....just yesterday i was on an indigo flight that had a flying time of a hour & 40 minutes but indigo had a half hour buffer so the flight took off half an hour late but still landed on time....every airline does this but indigo pr makes it out to be a big deal....

Unfortunately the aggressive capacity dumping by Indigo means Air India and Jet have both been forced into a defensive position and so have withdrawn from key markets. As an example, Jet has withdrawn completely from NAG altogether, while AI is down to a single flight to DEL! Compared to 6x daily NAG-DEL on Indigo!

Was forced to take a 6E flight NAG-DEL some days back just because they were the only option back to DEL in the evenings. The flight was delayed by 6+ hours! However I am told it doesnt count as a delay when they file with the DGCA. Exploiting a loophole ofcourse! If you inform passengers upto 2 hours in advance of flight time, it isnt considered a delay but a "reschedule". I received a text from the airline just as i was pulling into the NAG airport approx 2 hours before my flight scheduled at 1900. The flight was "rescheduled" in 1 hour increments till it finally took off at 0130 am! We never received any refreshments whatsoever though the staff did keep us updated. The evening Air India flight to BOM was delayed by 40 mins - and their pax were treated to a buffet in the airport restaurant upstairs!

And get this: The 6E aircraft was operating BOM-NAG-DEL with a 1700 hours departure ex-BOM. I talked to the cabin crew inflight and they said they had known about the rescheduling of their BOM departure to 2345 hours at 1pm itself and so had waited at the crew hotel. Which means Indigo fellas deliberately withheld info from passengers?!

Earlier people had a choice. Now its Indigo or no go! Earlier AI and Jet both had morning and evening departures both ways between NAG and BOM/DEL. AI had a morning A319 doing BOM-NAG-DEL and an A320 doing DEL-NAG-BOM, with both aircraft doing the reverse routing in the evening. Jet had the exact same schedule with 737-400 and 737-800 respectively.

Now AI is down to a single A320 doing DEL-NAG-RPR-DEL in the morning and a BOM-NAG-BOM in the evening! Jet has withdrawn completely. :( Meanwhile Indigo is upto 6x daily to DEL. Relentless capacity dumping!

9W these days functions more as a feeder service for Etihad. For example, out of MAA, they've canned direct flights to BRU, CMB, HYD, COK, TRV, CCU & VTZ...!! The only flights out of MAA i've seen them increase capacity to is probably TRZ & IXM...!!

The numbers seem to get better and better for the 6E folks..!!

http://www.livemint.com/Companies/Rf...Air-India.html

Spicejet now...
 

From not having money to settle In flight catering to upload food for regular scheduled flights only a few months back, to now wanting to buy 100 new planes...makes you wonder...!!

http://profit.ndtv.com/news/corporat...t-deal-1201673

Didn't they have ~50 B737MAX on order?

Yes they did if i remember right...

Indigo orders 250 A320Neo from Airbus
 

Indigo has announced that it has placed a further order for 250 A320Neo aircraft from Airbus.
This is in addition to its previous orders of 280 A320CEOs + A320Neos (of which more than 100 A320CEOs have been delivered).

This is Airbus's biggest order by far in terms of number of aircraft ordered in a single deal.

Source: http://www.airbus.com/presscentre/pr...0neo-aircraft/

that is a lot of planes....i wonder how many of them they will use themselves....

Till now, they haven't leased any of their planes to other airlines; though that might change.

One theory is that they are brutal in discarding aircraft after 5-6 years. Rumour has it that they just get aircraft out the door before a scheduled (and very expensive) D-check comes up after 6 years.
Due to this, even if more than 105 aircraft are delivered to them so far, they only have about 96 in the current fleet.

So chances are that the first aircraft to be delivered in this new order won't be around to see the last aircraft. ;)

Not brutal, but very wise. They actually do a sale and lease back the moment the aircraft joins the fleet and the lease term is for 3 years only. This way you need minimal cash on hand too. Not that it matters in the low interest environment... and BTW, they have already disposed of 17 aircraft so far: http://www.airfleets.net/flottecie/I...story-a320.htm

Cheers for the more accurate info :)