Thales signs 11-year avionics maintenance support contract with IndiGo

Global technology firm Thales has inked an 11-year avionics maintenance support contract with IndiGo for the airline's A320 family of aircraft, including for the over 800 planes that are to be delivered in the coming years.

Besides, its contract with IndiGo for fleet-wide Electronic Flight Bag rollout has been extended by another five years.

Listed in Paris, Thales is a leading player in advanced technologies for the defence, aerospace, and cyber and digital sectors.

"The new 11-year maintenance support contract for IndiGo's current Airbus A320 fleet and future order of A32X aircraft includes Thales' avionics 'By The Hour' and 'Repair By The Hour' programmes," Thales said in a release on Wednesday.

The contract will cover over 1,200 planes.

The repairs will be managed at Thales' MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) facility in Gurugram, Haryana.

IndiGo has also extended by five years the contract with AvioBook, a Thales company, for AvioBook Flight, an Electronic Flight Bag solution currently authorised for paperless operations by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

"In use across the entire IndiGo fleet for over a year, AvioBook Flight has already helped significantly reduce consumption of paper usage annually... and streamlining flight operations on over 2,000 flights every day," the release said.

According to the release, the AvioBook contract extends usage of the AvioBook Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) solution to the entire IndiGo fleet (650,000 flights per year to date) for five years.

Thales has been present in India since 1953.