Indigo took over the aviation news headlines when it placed its first wide body aircraft order. The Indian aviation powerhouse now has Airbus A350s on order and, along with those, Airbus A321XLRs. Those planes are poised to power the airline’s future expansion into Europe once they arrive, starting 2027. However it seems Indigo just can’t wait that long and just wants to dig its teeth into this new chapter of the business.
In this post:
- Just Can’t Wait Until 2027
- Indigo’s Norse Atlantic “Damp Lease”
- Indigo’s First European Destinations
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Just Can’t Wait Until 2027: Indigo Wants European Flights Now!
It seems as if Indigo, India’s second largest airline after Air India, just can’t wait up until 2027 to get its hands on its first long-range aircraft. The airline has experimented in the past with long range operations using leased aircraft and is about to undertake the same endeavor in 2025 with a different partner.
The airline’s experience in this type of operations involved and still involves two of the largest planes you can currently get your hands on as an airline. Indigo is leasing from Turkish Airlines two Boeing 777-300ERs (TC-LKE and TC-LKD). They are both configured with a quite peculiar cabin setup. Specifically it 1 row of extra legroom economy (on one) and business class (on the other) and the remaining 524 seats (for a total of 531 seats) all economy. Let me tell you that is a lot of seats and a beast of an operation. It still flies these aircraft from Istanbul down to Mumbai and Delhi in India.
Now, to further expand its long haul flights while awaiting for the first of its own planes to be delivered, it’s teaming up with a new partner. With the new leased aircraft will come new destinations, for the first time well within the European continent. This is, in all effects, a way of filling the gap between now and 2027 when the first long range and wide body planes will arrive. Let’s get into the details.
Indigo and Its New Partner Norse Atlantic: Boing 787s on a “Damp Lease”
Indigo after following its successful partnership with Turkish Airlines is looking to team up with another carrier, a much younger one, Norse Atlantic. Norse is a low-cost carrier which has emulated the Norwegian model for transatlantic low cost flights utilizing Boeing 787 aircraft. Things have been ok with Norse but never really took off. Therefore, to get a steady flow of cash coming into the business the Scandinavian low-cost carrier has also started leasing its aircraft to carriers who might need such a service.
The first carrier to hire Norse for such a service was Italian airline Neos, which in many aspects operates on a similar business model. Now, Indigo is the one to see potential in including the Scandinavian carrier’s aircraft in its operations.
The agreement between Norse and Indigo will have the Scandinavian airline provide a total of 4 planes to its Indian counterpart. The first has already joined Indigo’s fleet and the remaining three, which came as an expansion to the original agreement, will join later on in 2025.
All 4 aircraft will join Indigo’s operations in what has been defined as a damp lease. Now, we’ve talked about dry and wet lease but never of a damp one. As you might have imagined a damp lease falls somewhere in between the other two forms of aircraft lease. What that means is that Norse will provide the aircraft and part of the crew to run operations on these planes. Norse is an all Boeing 787-9 airline, hence, those are the planes that it will be providing Indigo.
Soon this first Boeing 787, and later the other 3 jet, will be put to good use. Indigo has already announced European services it’ll be flying these aircraft on.
Indigo’s First European Destinations: Coming in Summer 2025
The most obvious question to ask now is: what will Indigo do with its newly leased Boeing 787s? Long story short: fly them to Europe. The slightly longer version of the story is that it will be launching its first operations to European destinations.
Starting summer 2025, looking to cater to expats wanting to return to India during the summer holidays, Indigo will commence flights to:
- Amsterdam (AMS) – Netherlands
- Manchester (MAN) – United Kingdom
These are the first destinations ever to be served by Indigo in Europe, however, I feel there will be many more to follow. We won’t need to wait for 2027 for new flights to be announced. I think as the other Norse-leased planes arrive in India it is highly possibile that Indigo will divulge more network expansion plans on the long range side of its operations.