Low-cost flights between Hong Kong and India arrive as budget carrier IndiGo tests waters
- Airline sounds challenge to traditional carriers with new low-cost business model centred on smaller planes over longer distances with refuel stops
Low-cost flights between Hong Kong and India have arrived as budget carriers get creative to challenge traditional airlines’ passenger volumes and profits.
The move is part of an “experiment” by India’s largest carrier IndiGo to offer cheap long-haul flights using smaller planes over greater distances, including midway refuel stops, its chief commercial officer William Boulter told the Post in an exclusive interview.
His comments came with the debut of IndiGo’s Bangalore to Hong Kong route last week.
Late last month, fellow no-frills carrier Spicejet also launched flights between New Delhi and Hong Kong.
Boulter said: “We are in a test phase and to an extent experimenting with some of these routes. The Hong Kong route is an example that stretches the A320neo [Airbus model].”
In the same vein, IndiGo plans to use a low-cost structure to launch flights to London with its existing fleet, with a stopover for refuel at either Baku in Azerbaijan or Tbilisi in Georgia, by the middle of next year. In doing so, it could offer cheaper tickets and expand more aggressively internationally without using larger twin-aisle planes – which it doesn’t own or operate.
