Reportedly the country's largest carrier IndiGo is set to consolidate its position and rule the skies following the collapse of its rival Jet Airways. An industry executive said "The biggest airline will gain the maximum, so IndiGo will corner the major chunk of the air traffic. It anyways has massive capacity expansion plans lined up for the coming months and years”.
Furthermore Dhiraj Mathur, Partner, PwC, said that whoever brings more aircraft and crew will benefit the most. Currently IndiGo has a fleet of 200 aircraft and operates 1,400 daily flights connecting 53 domestic and 18 international destinations and the airline, which has 43.4% market share in the domestic market, has very aggressive fleet expansion plans.
Moreover the airline on Thursday said that it would induct as many as 27 planes in a record time of less than two weeks. Hence going by the fleet size and market share, Air India is likely to be the third biggest gainer, but aviation watchers doubted if the airline would be able to add aircraft quickly to its fleet. An industry veteran said "The plan to lease more planes would first require board approval. Then tendering will happen and short listing will be done. The entire process may take quite some time. In that case, the benefits would be very limited”.
