IndiGo Receives Its 100th Aircraft, Fleet Size Touches 84

Please read the edit notes at the end.

IndiGo received its 100th Airbus A320 from Hamburg, Germany, one of the three Airbus assembly lines then in operation. The aircraft, manufacturer serial number 6336 and registered VT-IAY, was handed over on 3 November at about 23:00 IST (17:30 UTC). IndiGo flew it from Hamburg to Istanbul, made a short technical stop to refuel, and continued to Delhi, landing at 09:00 IST on 4 November.

This aircraft completed the first order IndiGo placed with Airbus, on 16 June 2005 at the Paris Air Show. At that time IndiGo was just a name.

Even in 2005 IndiGo had done its homework. Airbus rarely praises an airline that has not yet started flying, but the then Airbus President and CEO Noel Forgeard said IndiGo was the product of deep analysis and planning by very experienced airline executives, and that Airbus was convinced it would succeed in a large and fast growing market.

By November 2014 IndiGo was the only airline in India to have reported profits consistently over the previous six years, and it was about to see a huge order delivered. On 22 June 2011 it firmed up an order for 180 A320s: 150 A320neo and 30 A320ceo (current engine option), making it one of the neo launch customers. On 15 October 2014 it signed an MoU for 250 A320neo. As The Flying Engineer reported first, IndiGo would also lease A320s short term from the ailing Tiger Airways.

IndiGo's fleet

Almost a year after ordering 100 aircraft in June 2005, IndiGo received its first A320 on 28 July 2006. It began operations on 4 August 2006, 11 days before India completed its 59th year of independence and just 6 days after taking its first aircraft.

Every aircraft since day one had been delivered directly from Airbus. The airline had never flown an aircraft previously used by another operator. Each aircraft went through a sale and leaseback. Early leases ran about six years, long enough to get the most from a brand new, efficient A320 while avoiding the costly D check. In 2014 the leases were extended to 10 years, in line with IndiGo's plan to add capacity aggressively.

There were anomalies in the leases. Of the 16 aircraft returned, five flew for IndiGo for as little as three months to 1 year 5 months. Three of them were by then flying for Etihad, the same airline IndiGo was losing many pilots to.

Of the 84 aircraft in service, almost a quarter were between two and three years old and another quarter between one and two years old. Nearly half the fleet had arrived in the previous two years. It had been two years since Kingfisher Airlines stopped flying, and nearly 60 percent of the fleet, almost 50 aircraft, had been added since then. IndiGo grew fast enough to fill the void Kingfisher left and held the largest domestic market share, above 30 percent.

On average, every 35th A320 built since 2006 went to IndiGo, and the airline received about one A320 a month. Yet for 120 days, from 1 April 2014 to 30 July 2014, it took no aircraft at all, the longest gap in its history. The number of aircraft joining each year had not been steady. The data also showed that the six year lease had been extended since early 2014.

Registration series

IndiGo needed five registration series for its 100 aircraft. Only three of them, IN, IE and IF, used every letter of the alphabet as the third letter.

All 16 aircraft that left the fleet were from the IN series. Sharklet equipped A320s began with the IF series, starting with VT-IFH, the first sharklet equipped A320 in India.

Because Airbus kept improving the A320, each series had something new, some of it not visible from outside. From VT-IAP onwards, all A320s had a smooth nose with the lightning strips embedded in the nose cone, which reduces drag.

What comes next

With 30 A320ceo still on order, IndiGo could keep taking one A320 a month for at least another 2.5 years. Tigerair's 12 A320s could boost capacity until IndiGo reached its target fleet with its own aircraft. With the early A320neo production rate set to be slow, mixed deliveries of ceo and neo aircraft might start late in 2015 and run for perhaps 1.5 years as Airbus raised output, with its new final assembly line at Mobile, Alabama, and moved from a mixed line to a neo line. Conversion of some of IndiGo's ceo orders to neo was expected.

Thanks to Oscar Victor for certain information.

Edits

Edit, thanks to Cyril Roy: according to Flightglobal, the 30 A320ceo had already been converted to A320neo, so no ceo aircraft remained on Airbus's order book for IndiGo. In that light, Tigerair's 12 A320s would fill the gap for exactly a year before neo deliveries began.

Edit, thanks to Shakti Lumba: the first aircraft delivery was corrected to July 2006 from June 2006, and the start of operations to 4 August 2006 from 15 August.