Indigo declares a loss of Rs 3,184 crore in Q1FY22

The Q1FY22 loss, the highest quarterly loss recorded by the company, was equivalent to about 55 per cent of the Rs 5,806 crore loss declared in the entire previous financial year, according to a Money Control report.

The loss in Q1Fy21 was Rs 3,174.2 crore, which came at the back drop of Covid-19 induced lockdown when flight operations remained suspended for 44 days.

However, the airline registered a bigger loss in the first quarter of this fiscal despite running its operations.

In the first quarter, the loss per day came at Rs 33.4 crore while the revenue from operations was recorded at Rs 30 crore each day.

Apparently, the airline could not benefit from the usual summer holidays and leisure travel during the first quarter of a financial year as the second wave of Covid-19 devastated the country claiming thousands of lives and forcing people to stay at home.

Further, the airline's share of corporate travellers, too, shrank from 20 per cent to 7 per cent and since the pandemic is still not over there is still no clarity when this will be restored to pre-Covid levels.

According to a Money Control report, Indigo is still talking about getting to pre-pandemic levels capacity-wise at the end of the year despite suffering losses because of deployment due to current constraints and lack of traffic.

It added that the airline is expected to return the remainder of its A320ceo aircraft by 2023, which will reduce its cost and induction of A321neos will help it reduce the cost per seat.

India’s biggest airline by fleet strength and domestic market share has a total of 262 leased aircraft at the end of June compared with 270 at the end of March, the report said.

This included 85 A320ceo aircraft at the end of Q1 compared with 100 A320ceo planes at the end of Q4 of FY21 and 123 a year earlier, the report added.