‘SpiceJet reduced flights helped us; Akasa quite small as of now & not competing with AI-Vistara’

NEW DELHI: IndiGo’s outgoing CEO Ronojoy Dutta spoke about three major developments in Indian airline industry at the moment — Tata’s mega plans for its four carriers, shrinking of SpiceJet and Akasa taking to the skies from Sunday.
“The competition is increasing, adding flights. But it’s quite small at this moment (Akasa). One of our major competitors has clearly reduced capacity a lot (SpiceJet) over the last year or two and that is helping us a lot. We do not see too much impact of the competition and if anything we see a healthy industry environment,” Dutta said in an earnings call on Wednesday.
Asked if full service Air India revived by Tatas and Vistara will take back the corporate business class passengers IndiGo got after Jet’s collapse in 2019, Dutta said: “We are not head-to-head competitors. They (AI and Vistara) are very focussed on long haul international, not short haul, with a business class product. That’s not a market we serve. Therefore their domestic strategy is tied to that (aiming to) fill their wide bodies.”