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Indigo ‘fastest growing airline’ in the world, says UK report

A UK-based air travel data company has called Indigo Airlines the ‘fastest growing airline’ in the world. The report, released by OAG, also ranks the airline 17th in its list of the ‘Top 50 air carriers in the world’.

According to the report, Indigo increased its scheduled capacity from 40,791,420 in 2015 to 52,025,760 in 2016 – an increase of 27.5 per cent.

The report also notes that Indigo has one of the youngest airline fleets among the top 20 airlines with an average aircraft age of 6 years. It had 138 aircraft in its fleet, and had ordered 456 narrow body aircrafts, the report said.
“The fastest growing of the Top 20, Indigo is India’s biggest low-cost carrier. Still serving predominantly the Indian domestic market but recording strong growth on international capacity too,” the report noted.
At least three Chinese airlines featured in the top 10 list including Chinese airline Xiamen Airlines (24.5%), Chinese domestic carriers Shandong Airlines (14.5%), and Hainan Airlines (14.4%). Others who registered fastest growth included American low-cost airline Spirit Airlines (20.4%), Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air (18.9%), Qatar Airways (18.0%), Vietnam Airlines (17.2%), Irish low cost carrier Ryanair (13.4%), and Emirates (10.7%).

American Airlines with 25,14,83,734 seats, Delta Air Lines 22,57,96,738 seats, Southwest Airlines 20,15,82,829, United Airlines 18,21,79,745 and Ryanair 13,36,75,731 were ranked as the top five in the top 20 carriers list by OAG.

Indigo, which faced a lot of criticism following an incident of ground crew assaulting a passenger at Delhi airport, continues to dominate the Indian skies with a market share of 39.5 per cent as per the air traffic data collected by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in October 2017. Jet Airways is a distant second with 15.5 percent.