India’s IndiGo to cut its fleet size over two years

Bloomberg

IndiGo will trim its fleet size over the next two years as the coronavirus pandemic continues to weigh on Asia’s biggest budget airline by market value and other carriers around the world.
“Fleet count will be stagnant, go down a little,” CEO Ronojoy Dutta told analysts during a conference call. “In 2022, we will be down slightly, by 2023, we will be up again.”
IndiGo, operated by InterGlobe Aviation, hasn’t engaged in any “major renegotiation” with Airbus SE on new deliveries, but it will keep returning
as many as 40 older planes a year, Dutta 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 globally have cut back on expansion plans and deferred or cancelled orders with Airbus and Boeing Co, forcing the planemakers to cut production and thousands of jobs. IndiGo sells planes to lessors and then leases them back, enabling it to operate a younger fleet with lower fuel consumption.