India's top airline IndiGo posts record quarterly loss

BENGALURU: Interglobe Aviation, which runs India’s largest airline IndiGo, reported its steepest quarterly loss on Thursday as pandemic-related travel restrictions continued to dent its operations.

The global aviation industry has been among the worst hit by the pandemic and related travel restrictions.

The airline said it expects third-quarter average seat kilometers (ASKs) to be around 60% of its ASKs for the same quarter a year earlier.

“We are slowly but surely stair-stepping our way back to normal capacity,” Chief Executive Officer Ronojoy Dutta said in a statement.

“Once we are back at 100% capacity, we will have lower unit costs, a stronger product, more efficient fleet and a robust network,” he said.

The company’s second-quarter net loss came in at 11.95 billion rupees ($161.61 million), compared with a loss of 10.66 billion rupees last year.

IndiGo, which dominates the domestic market, said its total debt as of September stood at 254,194 million rupees, up 28% from last year.

In June, IndiGo said it would cut up to 40 billion rupees in costs and speed up the return of older planes to leasing companies in an attempt to cope with the pandemic-incurred hit to business.

Revenue from operations plunged 66% to 27.41 billion rupees, the airline operator said on Thursday.