IndiGo to lease 6 Boeing 737 MAX planes from Qatar Airways to operate Doha flights | Business News
India’s largest airline IndiGo will induct six Boeing 737 MAX aircraft on wet or damp lease from one of its codeshare partners, Qatar Airways, for operating a bulk of its flights to and from Qatar’s capital Doha. The move is a part of IndiGo’s mitigation strategy in view of a large number of aircraft groundings due to engine and supply chain issues.
This will be the first instance when IndiGo inducts narrowbody Boeing aircraft. The airline’s entire current narrowbody jet fleet comprises Airbus A320 family aircraft. Additionally, the airline has ATR turboprops for regional operations and two widebody Boeing 777 jets on damp lease from Turkish Airlines.
The two 777s are used exclusively to operate flights between India and Istanbul and IndiGo’s arrangement with Qatar Airways will be similar to the one it has with Turkish Airlines. Qatar Airways has just nine Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in its fleet, and after this agreement with IndiGo, two-thirds of those will be on lease to the Indian carrier.
“Subject to regulatory approvals, we will induct six more aircraft from Qatar Airlines for the Doha route on wet or damp lease in the coming quarters,” said Gaurav Negi, the airline’s chief financial officer in a post-earnings investor call on Friday. Negi did not elaborate further on the induction timeline for the six aircraft.
Over 70 IndiGo aircraft are currently grounded. As of June 30, the airline had a total fleet of 382 aircraft, most of which are Airbus A320 family planes. Given the substantial number of aircraft groundings, IndiGo has been putting in place mitigation measures that include retaining older planes that the airline had planned to let go, extending leases on some others, and taking more planes on lease. The agreement with Qatar Airways is expected to help IndiGo free up six of its own aircraft for deployment on other routes.
“These (six Boeing 737 MAX planes) are going to be operated the same way we are operating the wide bodies (from Turkish Airlines), which are again Boeing aircraft, the 777s. This is a similar structure that we are getting into. So, the entire ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance, and insurance) is going to be with Qatar (Airways),” Negi said, adding that apart from the IndiGo cabin crew that will be trained on the new aircraft type, cockpit crew, maintenance, and insurance will be the responsibility of Qatar Airways.
According to aviation sector experts, Qatar Airways also stands to benefit from this arrangement. The bilateral air services agreement between India and Qatar allows 25,000 seats per week for each country’s airlines. The seat quota from Qatar’s side has been exhausted completely, and this arrangement with IndiGo will help the Doha-based airline to earn additional revenue from India operations even as the seat quota utilised will be that of IndiGo.
