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IndiGo, one of Asia’s largest budget airlines, is considering charging passengers for checked bags as it prepares for a pricing war in India’s cutthroat air travel sector, which is showing signs of recovery after the worst of Covid.
Even though India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation ruled that carriers can start offering zero baggage and no check-in baggage fares in February — just before a deadly wave of the pandemic hit the South Asian nation — IndiGo, operated by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., did not implement the so-called unbundling of fares. IndiGo’s Chief Executive Officer Ronojoy Dutta said in an interview on Tuesday that regulatory restrictions on rates and capacity connected to Covid prohibited the company from making a choice at the time.
“We have been talking to the government about that,” Dutta said. “We’re waiting for everything to settle down before we lock something.”
IndiGo will compete with Go Airlines India Ltd., which is likewise attempting to unbundle baggage fees from airline tickets in order to promote itself as an ultra-low-cost carrier. IndiGo’s decision to slash ticket prices even further would ratchet up competition among carriers known for driving fares so low that they barely cover costs, if at all. Many airlines have gone out of business as a result of the pricing wars in what was one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation sectors prior to the pandemic.