Who would have thought that we will see IndiGo operate Boeing B737MAX aircraft one day? I surely did not. The airline has announced it is damp leasing six B737MAX aircraft from Qatar Airways to expand its fleet amid groundings of Pratt & Whitney-powered Airbus A320 aircraft.
IndiGo damp leasing B737MAX aircraft
IndiGo will take six Boeing B737MAX-8 aircraft from Qatar Airways on short-term damp lease. The airline announced this on 26th July 2024 at the post-earnings conference call. IndiGo says that it is doing so to mitigate the shortfall caused by the grounding of around 70 Airbus A320 family aircraft due to issues with the Pratt and Whitney engines.
The new Boeing 737 Max are going to be operated the same way we are operating the wide body Boeing aircraft 777 with Turkish Airways.
Gaurav Negi, Chief Financial Officer, IndiGo said.
The flights will be operated by Qatar Airways’ pilots but the cabin crew will be from IndiGo. And as part of the agreement, Qatar Airways will be responsible for the maintenance of these aircraft. These aircraft will be used exclusively for operating flights between India and Qatar.
While the duration of the lease is unknown, it will probably be for six months, as the Government of India allows domestic airlines to damp lease aircraft for only six months, with an option to increase the lease for another six months thereafter.
Damp lease, an arrangement under which the lessor provides an aircraft along with cockpit crew and maintenance to the airline, is costlier than a normal lease. The low-cost carrier has already leased around 20 Airbus A320 family aircraft to cover the shortfall.
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Why?
India has a Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) with many countries, including Qatar. The BASA between India and Qatar allows only a handful of flights each week each way. The agreement hasn’t been expanded since quite a few years. This means that Qatar Airways cannot expand flights to India. Then what is another way of expanding? The answer is codeshare flights.
The flag carrier of Qatar has a codeshare partnership with IndiGo, India’s largest airline. Qatar Airways places its code on IndiGo-operated flights between India and Qatar. This way, IndiGo brings passengers to Doha from where Qatar Airways will take them on its flights and vice-versa.
This is all working well for both airlines since Qatar Airways is getting a significant chunk of traffic from India and IndiGo is able to fill its flights with premium passengers with the help of Qatar Airways.
IndiGo operates flights to Doha from Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kannur, Kochi, Kozhikode and Mumbai. It has a substantial schedule of flights to the capital of Qatar.
The damp leasing of six aircraft is a strategic move which will help IndiGo to free all the A320s deployed on Doha flights and deploy them on domestic hops. This means a significant capacity increase for the low-cost carrier.
Qatar Airways has nine B737MAX in its fleet. All of them were destined for Siberia’s S7 Airlines. The Russia-Ukraine war led to sanctions where Boeing couldn’t deliver these aircraft to S7. Qatar Airways was in a serious need of these narrowbody aircraft as it could not get the A321neos it ordered with Airbus due to its fight with the European aircraft manufacturer regarding A350’s issues. This is all sorted now but it has meant that Qatar Airways will now get A321neos later than expected.
IndiGo will deploy these leased B737Max aircraft on its flights from Delhi, Mumbai, Kochi, Chennai, Kannur, Bengaluru and Hyderabad starting August 2024. IndiGo is increasing frequency of flights from Mumbai to Doha from twice-daily to thrice-daily from the end of August 2024.
What to expect on these flights?
These B737MAX-8 aircraft feature 8 Business Class seats and 168 Economy Class seats. The seats feature power-outlets as well as personal device holders for streaming entertainment.
It’s unknown whether IndiGo will sell Business Class seats on these aircraft or not. Most probably, it won’t. But as far as the economy class experience is considered, it will be better for IndiGo’s passengers than IndiGo’s own hard product. Both the airlines will sell Economy Class seats under the existing codeshare agreement. You can check out this review by One Mile at a Time of Qatar Airways B737MAX-8.
Featured image by IndiGo and oneworld Virtual
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