Amsterdam crucial point for connecting with rest of Europe, America: IndiGo

Expanding its international wings, IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers has said Amsterdam will be an important point to connect with the rest of Europe and North America and highlighted it is a "fit for purpose" airline.

IndiGo, India's largest airline with a domestic market share of 64 per cent, is fast expanding its overseas reach with new routes and partnerships.

Marking the foray into Europe, IndiGo this week, commenced direct services from Mumbai to Manchester and Amsterdam, with Elbers describing the launches as a "momentous occasion".

"I think the story now is by touching in Europe. The change is much more profound than just two new destinations. It's a change of product. It's a change in some of the partnerships. It's a change of profile," Elbers told PTI.

With a fleet of more than 400 planes, IndiGo flies to over 90 domestic and 40 overseas destinations, with the latest additions being the start of services to Manchester and Amsterdam on July 1 and 2, respectively.

Elbers said Amsterdam airport is great for connectivity and it certainly will become an important point to connect from here to the rest of Europe and North America.

The airline plans to add 10 new international destinations to its network in the current fiscal year ending March 2026. Other planned destinations include London, Copenhagen, and Athens.

In an interview with PTI in Amsterdam, a day after its inaugural flight landed in the Dutch city, the IndiGo CEO said the launches mark a new chapter in the airline's wonderful book and that more chapters are to come.

Elaborating on the internal changes in moving to long haul services, Elbers said IndiGo is a "fit-for-purpose airline" and the carrier had one clear sort of product from the start.

"What we have now done is we have made kind of groups of products depending on the routes we operate. So the product we have now on Manchester, we can also use the same for London or for Copenhagen. 

"And the product we have on domestic sectors, we can just keep adding domestic sectors. So there's some change internally," he noted.

According to him, the aim is to make Indian passengers feel at home and non-Indian passengers have a flight on IndiGo that will also be the start of their journey to India.

"So, it should be sort of contemporary Indian or Indian with a global twist type of approach. I think that is what's the objective," Elbers said.

For the long haul operations, IndiGo is damp leasing six wide-body Boeing 787-9 aircraft from Norway's Norse Atlantic Airways.

Currently, one of them is being used for the three weekly flights each to Manchester and Amsterdam from Mumbai.

Elbers said IndiGo expects to take three more planes from Norse Atlantic in October-November time frame and the remaining two are expected to come in the first quarter of 2026.

The airline is set to induct long range narrow-body A321 XLR planes by the end of this year or early 2026 and this aircraft will allow the carrier to add destinations like Athens.

"It (A321 XLR) will allow us to add new destinations such as Athens. It will also allow us to do destinations from different points in India...

"Today, we fly to Nairobi from Mumbai. Perhaps in the future, given the huge Gujarati community in that part of Africa, we may operate out of Ahmedabad. I'm not saying we do, but we may," Elbers said.