The Indian government’s success in rapidly expanding the country’s road network is set to pose a significant challenge for the domestic air cargo sector, as improved road infrastructure will make ground transportation of goods more cost-effective and time-efficient, said Mark Sutch, chief commercial officer (Cargo) at IndiGo, on Friday.
He mentioned that only about 60 per cent of IndiGo’s total cargo capacity is being utilised due to the airline’s rapid expansion to 2,000 flights a day, resulting in a number of routes with low cargo demand. “We are looking at, purely incrementally, if we can get some very reasonably priced cargo on these IndiGo flights (with low demand right now),” he added. IndiGo transported 261,852 tonnes of domestic cargo in 2023, recording an 11.42 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth.
“I think one of the biggest challenges for domestic air cargo going forward is the government’s success in building roads. That is really important. If you take the Delhi-Mumbai sector, which is very heavy for us, the road system between those two cities in a number of years is going to be so good that the transport time will come down,” Sutch noted. IndiGo operates 280 flights per week on the Delhi-Mumbai route, making it the busiest one for the airline.
“One of the big bottlenecks we have at the moment is our airport infrastructure. I have been going to India for the last 20 years and every time, I have seen tremendous improvement in the passenger side of the business at airports. If you go around and look at the cargo side, it (improvement) is not quite much. I am not saying that no airport has worked on the cargo side but there are a lot of space-related constraints,” he added.