India’s largest carrier IndiGo is scaling back its number of damp leases as it recovers from disruptions caused by inspections of the Pratt & Whitney geared turbofans (GTF) that power its Airbus A320neo-family fleet.
For its 2024-25 financial year ended March 31, 2025, the LCC saw peak groundings in its second quarter of about 75 aircraft. This declined to sixty-something aircraft in the third quarter, fifty-something in the March quarter and is now down to the forties, the airline’s management said on a May 21 earnings call.
“With the reduction in grounded aircraft and steady flow of incoming aircraft, we have also started to re-deliver the damp lease aircraft. We did redeliver eight aircraft in the March quarter and another five in April,” IndiGo CFO Gaurav Negi said.
As of the end of March, IndiGo had a fleet of 434 aircraft, including 27 on damp lease. The majority of the fleet are A320neo-family aircraft.
The grounded aircraft come from a fleet of around 130 GTF-powered aircraft at IndiGo; another 200 or so A320neo types are powered by CFM Leap-1A engines.
All of the incoming A320neo-family aircraft from IndiGo’s huge orderbook of almost 1,000 narrowbodies are powered by CFM Leap engines, which will further reduce the proportion of its fleet exposed to GTF issues.
Having previously only ordered GTF-powered Neos, at the 2019 Paris Air Show, the airline switched to the CFM Leap for its order for an additional 280 A320neos.
IndiGo’s pre-tax profit in its March quarter was INR32 billion ($373 million), up 79% year-over-year, although it fell 5.7% for the full year.
During the March quarter, IndiGo awarded a maintenance contract to Jordan-based Joramco to conduct heavy maintenance checks and end-of-lease services for its aircraft.
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