By Staff Correspondent
The forthcoming peak travel quarter in December might witness Indian airlines grappling with potential capacity shortages following sluggish progress in the induction plans of leading airlines, as reflected in the data from Flightradar24, a global aircraft tracking site.
The grounding of the budget airline, Go First has brought about a paltry increase of just 0.9% in the domestic fleet size, which currently stands close to 680. Among the key scheduled carriers, only IndiGo, the market frontrunner, Tata Group’s Air India, and Akasa Air, a burgeoning startup, have augmented their aircraft fleets since this past May.
Flightradar24 data indicates that IndiGo experienced a moderate rise of 3% in its fleet, bringing it to 312 aircraft, whilst Air India saw a slightly more significant growth of 5% to 124 aircraft. Nevertheless, maintenance and spare parts shortage issues have grounded 47 of IndiGo’s aircraft fleet.
To ameliorate the impact of supply chain disruptions that are currently beleaguering original equipment manufacturers of aircraft, Indian airlines are deploying various strategic measures. One example is IndiGo, which, according to Pushan Sharma, Director of Research at Crisil Market Intelligence and Analytics, has reinstated older leased aircraft into service to counteract the lag in new aircraft delivery.
