Worst hit from Turkiye and Azerbaijan boycott could be an Indian company

For all the public uproar in India against Türkiye and Azerbaijan — bookings being cancelled, demand for cancelling imports and social media calls for boycotting brands using products from Türkiye, the biggest loser could well be an Indian company — Indigo.

India’s biggest airliner is caught smack in the middle of the devil and the deep blue sea. It’s zeroing in on Turkiye’s Istanbul as its international transit hub, and working out an air services agreement allowing more flights between the two countries has paid handsome dividends — until now.

“(The codeshare with Türkiye) is fuelling both aviation and economic growth, creating numerous job opportunities in India…(serving) as a vital engine for economic activity to support trade worth billions of dollars between the two countries that span several verticals beyond just travel,” an Indigo official told THE WEEK.

“Through the codeshare agreement, international travel has become more accessible and affordable as passengers benefit from cost-effective two-stop flights from India's smaller cities to Europe and the USA,” she added.

The Gurugram-based airline’s two-fold strategy to expand international traffic is unravelling under the present campaign, and CEO Pieter Elbert will definitely be hoping that it blows over pretty soon. First of this was the ‘two-stop flight’ principle which hinged heavily on Indigo’s own massive domestic network getting linked to Turkish Airlines’ hub of Istanbul via massive daily 500+ seater aircraft service from Mumbai and Delhi, from where Turkish Airlines would take over and connect these passengers to towns big and small across Europe, USA, Canada and more.

This agreement with Turkish Airlines offered Indigo an easy buy-in into the lucrative global westward international traffic from India, till now dominated by the likes of Emirates and Air India. At least until Indigo’s own orders for wide-bodied aircraft which can do the westward routes directly from India arrived. The airline has an order from Airbus 40 A321XLR and 30 A350 aircraft.

Second was Elber’s own strategy of developing under-served international destinations and turning them into Indigo’s virtual monopolies, instead of fighting over fiercely competitive international hotspots like Singapore or Dubai. So the airline, after covering the ‘de rigueur’ Gulf stops, started services to less familiar destinations like Baku in Azerbaijan, Nairobi in Kenya, Jakarta in Indonesia and more.

“We establish some market info first, looking into general parameters like GDP and foreign investments. Then we looked at whether Indians want to go to these places, how much of a detour is necessary to get there today and what options they have now,” said Elbers in an interaction with THE WEEK more than a year ago.

Both moves were runaway successes. The Türkiye pit stop soon became in most instances the most cost-effective way to travel from India to the west (not to forget more Indians travelling to Türkiye itself for tourism), while Indian tourists swarmed to places like Baku in Azerbaijan and Bali in Indonesia. For example, while 60,000 travellers went from India to Azerbaijan in 2022, after Indigo started its flights that figure burgeoned into 2.5 lakh by last year.

But with that success turning into a nightmare, the airline’s present policy is to keep calm and ride it out, even as officials told a business news site that it will only reconsider if demand to Istanbul takes a hit in the coming weeks.

“The additional revenue (earned through these international operations) has also led to increased tax contributions to the Indian exchequer, supporting economic growth. IndiGo is fuelling the aviation sector's development and creating jobs, both direct and indirect, across our nation. It’s a win-win for customers and the broader Indian economy,” added the airline official.