IndiGo’s Passenger-to-Freighter conversions came as blessing in disguise. The revenue collection zoomed up by a mammoth 9.6 per cent during the pandemic. Also we are positive of the pot ential of cargo business post-Covid-19, says Willy Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer, IndiGo.
Priyanshi Bana
Air cargo tonnage-wise, what percentage increase was recorded in Indigo in 2021 as compared to 2020?
Even though the aviation industry has seen the worst time last year, the cargo business has been a silver lining. It contributed greatly toward revenue generation for the aviation sector. At IndiGo, we started with ‘no’ freighters, but deployed around 10 A320/321 passenger aircraft for cargo operations as our ‘CarGo-in-Cabin’ charters. We added some minor changes to the cabin and used the aircraft cabin and belly space.
Talking about 2021, we have initiated a freighter programme and are in the process of sourcing 4 A321CEO aircraft. The A321P2F, Passenger-to-Freighter conversion is the most efficient narrow-bodied freighter available, offering 24 container positions and supporting a payload of up to 27 tons, which is expected in the first half of CY2022. For the fiscal year 2021, our cargo revenue increased by 9.6 per cent compared to the previous year. We are also anticipating a potential structural shift from traditional widebodies to narrow body cargo aircraft, and with our upcoming freighters, we will be able to take full advantage of this opportunity.
Apart from medical cargo transported last year, what other goods were in demand in 2021?
With cargo on seats, we have been able to participate in a number of different markets. We transported medical cargo, vaccine cargo, and perishable cargo.
Medical cargo: We have been carrying oxygen concentrators, medical equipment, and critical hospital supplies through the past 18 months.
Vaccine cargo: We have transported a total of 67.9 crore doses from January 12 to October 20, 2021. The airline carried 1,727 tons of COVID-19 vaccines via 4,505 flights, securing a leading share of 67.9 per cent in vaccine transportation during this period.
Perishable cargo: We have maintained and supported supply chains in and out of the country by
carrying fresh vegetables, fruits and other export cargo.
Was digitalisation of any help in moving seamless cargo?
The pandemic has encouraged us to adopt a number of ground-breaking automation technologies. These include:
- Introduction of the Shipper App across our domestic network has brough about an ease of business to the cargo fraternity. This has given an opportunity for agents to view status of their shipments, complete airline cargo reservations all on a real-time basis.
- We have also adopted the latest payment integration methodologies, thus giving the agents an additional medium to complete their payments.
- The valuable cargo business for which we have been a market leader, have introduced real-time valuable box tracking thus ensuring the shipments are safe and inventory of assets maintained.
- Implementation of standard IATA Cargo IMP messaging across the domestic and international network has helped us to integrate our cargo software with g round handling agents. This enabling our customers to track their shipments end to end.
- On the business intelligence front, we have built various tools to track the overall cargo performance and
also looked at tracking the very sensitive COVID-19 vaccine movement which for which we have been market leaders as well.
How has transformation of air cargo benefitted in New Normal?
We have been one of the most innovative airlines in India and around the world. We had started focusing on cargo some years ago, and it is a critical part of our ancillary revenues. However, the pandemic accentuated the potential of the cargo business for us as it provided revenues in the absence of normal scheduled commercial flight operations, within India and internationally. In general, the pandemic has reinforced the importance of cargo operations in the airline business. In the future, we at IndiGo are confident of its longer-term development post-COVID-19. We face the future with optimism and have four full freighter aircraft on order, the A321P2F, the first of which will arrive in next year.
