IndiGo writes history. Never had anyone ordered 500 planes in one fell swoop
It is the largest single order in commercial aviation history: 500 aircraft, worth about 55 billion [...]
It is the largest single order in commercial aviation history: 500 aircraft, worth about $55 billion. Announcing this, during the second day of the ongoing Air Show at Paris Le Bourget Airport, was Indian low-cost carrier IndiGo.
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The purchased aircraft are all from the Airbus A320 family.. Specifically A320neo, A321neo, A321-LR and A321-XLR. The latter is the ultra-long-haul model of the A321neo, which is expected to begin operations by the end of next year.
It is not that IndiGo lacked A320s and A321s: on three different occasions (2011, 2014, and 2019) had already ordered a whopping 830 of them. That with yesterday's 500 brings the total to 1,330 airplanes ordered and make India's low-cost carrier the top Airbus customer ever when it comes to A320 family aircraft. Much of those 830 aircraft ordered in the past few years have yet to be delivered, as to date IndiGo has received 'just' 308, of which 264 operational
Founded in 2006, it is now the country's top airline by domestic traffic with over 60% of passengers carried within India. Abroad it flies to the Indian sub-continent, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, but the percentage of international passengers is just 10% of the total (about 78 million in 2022). The airline's goal is, in the next few years, to expand powerfully abroad, thanks in part to the new order that includes long-haul aircraft, to 30% of the total to bring the proportion of 'international' travelers to the total number of those carried.
India's air transport sector is exploding, with the country continuing to record a growing population set to surpass that of China by the end of this year. And Indigo's record-breaking order came just four months after the barely less record-breaking one placed in February with Airbus and Boeing by the Tata Group, owner of Air India and Vistara, the other two major airlines in the country. In that case, 470 planes had been ordered.
