IndiGo gets DGCA nod to wet lease 11 A320 planes

Aviation watchdog DGCA has given approval to IndiGo to wet lease 11 A320 planes as the country's largest airline grapples with capacity challenges due to P&W engine woes, according to officials.

IndiGo, which operates more than 1,800 flights daily with a fleet of over 300 aircraft, is expanding its network on domestic and international routes.

Around 40 planes of IndiGo are grounded due to Pratt & Whitney engine issues.

Against this backdrop, the carrier has decided to wet lease narrow-body A320 aircraft to meet rising travel demand.

IndiGo has been allowed to wet lease 11 A320 aircraft, a senior official at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said on Wednesday.

When contacted, an IndiGo spokesperson said that with the continuous rise in travel demand, "we keep evaluating all possible measures to cater to our customers' needs".

However, the spokesperson did not comment on the wet leasing of A320 planes. A source in the know said the airline is looking to wet lease around 22 A320 aircraft.

Under the wet lease arrangement, aircraft are leased out along with operating crew and engineers. Generally, airlines opt for wet leasing of planes for short periods to tackle supply constraints.

The airline already has two Boeing 777 planes on wet lease from Turkish Airlines.

As many as 39 A320 aircraft of IndiGo are grounded out of the total fleet of 328 planes as of September 13, as per data available with the aircraft tracking website Planespotters.net.

IndiGo is the largest customer of the A320 planes and the aircraft are powered by P&W engines.

On August 2, IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers said the number of aircraft impacted by the supply chain challenge issues was in the high thirties.

"I would actually label it now around 40," he had said during a call with analysts to discuss the June quarter results.

During the company's annual general meeting on August 24, Elbers told shareholders that a whole range of mitigating measures are being taken to address the Aircraft on Ground (AOG), including cooperation with Turkish Airlines.

"We are dealing with some AOG situation... AOG is being dealt with a whole range of mitigating measures. These measures were announced at the end of last year and have been effective in order to make sure that we deliver our capacity guidance that we provided to the market and shareholders earlier," Elbers had said.

P&W is already grappling with supply chain issues and some of the aircraft of IndiGo are already grounded due to engine issues.

Meanwhile, in July, US-based P&W said it had found that a rare condition in powdered metal used to manufacture certain engine parts may reduce the life of those parts.

P&W had said the material anomalies would impact around 1,002 PW1100G engines worldwide.

On August 10, DGCA said material anomalies detected in certain P&W engines will have a 'minimal' impact on the IndiGo fleet as only two operational engines of the airline will be required to be removed for inspection.

While a total of 15 engines powering IndiGo planes will be impacted, 13 of them are currently non-operational, a senior official at the regulator had said.