India’s largest airline expects to reach pre-Covid international capacity by end-2021, CEO says

India’s largest airline expects to reach pre-Covid international capacity by end-2021, CEO says

SINGAPORE — Indian low-cost carrier IndiGo's international operations may be struggling, but the division could make a full recovery by the end of the year, the airline's chief executive told CNBC this week.Ronojoy Dutta of IndiGo, which is operated by InterGlobe Aviation, said the split between domestic and international segments for the airline has been a "tale of two cities."Domestic recovery has been strong, while international recovery has "all the challenges of Covid and testing and quarantine," he told CNBC's "Street Signs Asia" on Monday.The country last week extended a ban on international commercial passenger flights until the end of February. Local travel was allowed to resume in May.IndiGo is a low-cost carrier that primarily operates internal flights, and is India's largest passenger airline.Aircraft operated by Go Airlines Ltd. and IndiGo, a unit of InterGlobe Aviation, stand at Terminal 3 of Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, on Sunday, June 28, 2020.T. Narayan | Bloomberg | Getty Images"We are struggling at only 28% of our pre-Covid capacity," he said of international flights. However, domestic operations have reached 80% of pre-pandemic levels."I think we should be at 100% of domestic capacity by April at the latest," Dutta predicted. "International