India needs airlines that match its size, scale & potential: Pieter Elbers

India needs airlines that match the size, scale and potential of the country to compete in the global aviation space, IndiGo Chief Pieter Elbers said on Thursday. Speaking at the CNBC TV18 Global Leadership Summit, Elbers said his airline is aiming to give "wings" to the nation and attempting to take the India brand to the globe.

"There are some larger airlines emerging in the market, it's exactly the same trend as what's happening in other parts of the world. So this consolidation phase that has taken place in the US, it has taken place in Europe, and it's taking place in India itself now," Elbers said in response to a question on the merger of Vistara with Air India.

"So, if we want to compete and bring India to the global stage, we need airlines matching that size and IndiGo clearly is going to be one of them," he said.


"Look at a country of the size and scale and potential of India. We should have airlines like banks and consumer products, which are matching the size and the scale and the potential of the country itself," Elbers said.

India has changed enormously in the last 18 years, since the inception of IndiGo, and that changing, entrepreneurial, and aspirational India, "deserves and is waiting for a product that is cost-competitive, but yet serving the aspirational needs", Elbers said.

IndiGo is the seventh-largest airline in the world when it comes to global presence, he said, adding that the airline has the capacity to add international presence.

Today we do a little over 30 international destinations (and) by the end of the year (we would have) 40 and with new planes coming almost at a pace of one aircraft per week, "from there, we'll expand our wings and giving wings to the nation to go actually to all these corners of the world", Elbers said.

International traffic right regime still has a lot of opportunities to grow for Indian carriers, he said.

"And there's quite a few places in the world where there's foreign airlines flying into India and Indian airlines are not really present. So I think for the time being there's still a lot of room available," he added.