The Centre has given its approval to IndiGo’s plans to start direct flight services between India and Africa, sources told FE. Accordingly, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has allowed the airline to start services between Mumbai and Nairobi.
The regulator, before permitting air carriers to start operations to new foreign destinations, assesses their preparedness to conduct such flights. After the assessment, DGCA has approved the new flight service to start from July 24.
In addition to Nairobi, IndiGo will be adding five new destinations across Asia, and Africa via direct flight services. It plans to connect Jakarta in Indonesia, Tbilisi in Georgia, Baku (Azerbaijan), Tashkent ( Uzbekistan) and Almaty (Kazakhstan) to Indian cities. IndiGo had said it will add 174 weekly international flights between June and September, including new destinations, routes, and frequencies.
The airline has also been expanding its international footprint via codeshare agreement. Last week, IndiGo said it will launch new codeshare connections via Istanbul to the US cities of New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, from June 15.
At present, IndiGo operates a daily two-way service on the Delhi-Istanbul and Mumbai-Istanbul routes. It has deployed one wide-body- Boeing 777 aircraft each on these routes.
Through its codeshare arrangement with Turkish Airlines, IndiGo has been adding connections to European destinations over the last few months. These codeshare connections provide access to the countries including Bulgaria, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, Hungary amongst others.