IndiGo starting flights to Abu Dhabi

India’s largest domestic low budget carrier, IndiGo, announced yesterday that it will start operating daily flights from Kochi and Kozhikode in Kerala state to Abu Dhabi, marking the company’s first operations to the UAE capital.

The carrier already operates 13 daily flights to Dubai and another four to Sharjah; Abu Dhabi becomes the airline’s 11th international destination. As part of its new operations, the airline will operate a daily flight from Kochi-Abu Dhabi starting October 15, and another daily service from Kozhikode-Abu Dhabi from October 16. Airfares start from as low as Dh355.

William Boulter, chief commercial officer at IndiGo, said: “We felt that Abu Dhabi was a market that still had some room for service to India. There’s a large Indian community working here and they need to go home from time to time. Equally, there’s a large proportion of visiting relatives — people from Kerala coming to visit their relatives working here and vice versa,” Boulter said.

The flights will be operated by the airline’s Airbus A320 aircraft, with a single class configuration and a passenger capacity of 180 to 186 passengers.