Fleet size at biggest A320neo customer IndiGo will shrink for two years

[NEW DELHI] IndiGo, Asia's biggest budget airline by market value, will shrink in fleet size for two years as the coronavirus pandemic destroys air travel all around the world.

"Fleet count will be stagnant, go down a little," chief executive officer Ronojoy Dutta told analysts at a post-earnings conference call on Thursday. "In 2022, we will be down slightly, by 2023, we will be up again."

While IndiGo, operated by InterGlobe Aviation, hasn't done any "major renegotiation" with Airbus on new deliveries, it will keep returning older jets at a pace of as many as 40 a year, he said. IndiGo is the world's biggest buyer of Airbus's best-selling A320neo-family of jets, having ordered as many as 730 of them, and is the market leader in India.

Airlines across the world have cut back on expansion plans and deferred or cancelled orders with Airbus and Boeing, forcing the planemakers to cut production and thousands of jobs. IndiGo, like many other airlines globally, sells planes to lessors only to lease them back, enabling it to keep a younger fleet with lower fuel consumption.

At the end of September, IndiGo had a fleet of 282 planes, including 117 of an older A320 model. IndiGo has previously said it plans to return all of the older models in two years.

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