IndiGo Airways: India's hottest low-cost carrier

New Delhi: India's IndiGo Airlines may be the world's hottest low-cost carrier. But the company's lightning fast sprint to the top of the food chain offers something else for market watchers: a new spin on the so-called "bottom of the pyramid."
This month, close on the heels of the record-setting, $15.6 billion purchase of 180 passenger jets from Airbus, IndiGo topped state-owned Air India to become the country's second-largest carrier — matching liquor baron Vijay Mallya's full-service Kingfisher Airlines with an 18.6 percent share of the market. It also announced it would start international service with flights to Singapore, Bangkok, Dubai and Muscat this summer.
Since 2008, when the company booked its first profit even as high fuel prices and the economic downturn ravaged its competitors, IndiGo's net income has grown more than five times — from a shade under $20 million to more than $120 million. And the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation reckons its one of the hottest airlines to watch in 2011, saying, "Airports in the Indian subcontinent, Gulf and Southeast Asia take note: IndiGo is coming."
With Boeing forecasting that Indian air traffic will grow 15 percent a year over the next five years and that India will require more than 1,000 commercial jets over the next 20, according to the Wall Street Journal, that may just well make IndiGo the fastest growing airline in the world's fastest growing aviation market. And questions about how it will pay Airbus for all those shiny new planes — which will be rolling in until 2025 — has already boosted excitement about a possible IPO.
02/02/11 Jason Overdorf/GlobalPost

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Categories: Indigo Airlines Feb 2011