New Delhi, June 2 (Agency) Riding on growing demand for air travel on foreign routes, budget carrier IndiGo on Friday announced massive scale-up of its international operations launching as many as 174 weekly flights to various cities such as Nairobi, Jakarta, Tashkent and Almaty.As per the plan, the airline with the largest share in the domestic market will connect Nairobi in Kenya and Jakarta in Indonesia with direct flights from Mumbai starting July.”Delhi will get connected in August to Tbilisi, Georgia (3x) & Baku, Azerbaijan (4x) and in September to Tashkent, Uzbekistan (4x), and Almaty, Kazakhstan (3x),” the airline said.Along with flights on these new routes, IndiGo will also be resuming daily services from Delhi to Hong Kong in August. The Delhi-Hong Kong flights had been suspended in the wake of Covid pandemic three years back.
“The addition of these exciting new destinations, new direct flight routes, enhanced flight frequencies, and strategic codeshare partnerships, will help us expand our footprint across four continents with Africa and Central Asia being penetrated for the first time. With this expansion in our network, we will now be directly touching 32 international destinations (up from 26), next to our 78 domestic destinations,” said Pieter Elbers, CEO, IndiGo.The airline said that its expansion plans include launching more direct international services bringing the Middle Eastern destinations closer to more Indian cities by connecting Dammam to Lucknow, Chennai, and Kochi; Abu Dhabi to Goa, Lucknow, and Ahmedabad; Ras Al Khaimah to Hyderabad; Bahrain to Kochi and Jeddah to Ahmedabad over the next few months.Along with this, the airline announced increased frequencies between Mumbai-Dhaka in August 2023.”In addition, IndiGo is also offering direct international connectivity from destinations like Bhubaneshwar and planning for international flights from North Goa Airport. The airline will commence exclusive flights from Bhubaneshwar to Singapore and Bangkok from June 2023,” IndiGo said.