Ronojoy Dutta appointed IndiGo Airlines CEO, confirms InterGlobe Aviation Limited

In a big announcement, the owner of India's biggest airline by market share IndiGo, InterGlobe Aviation Limited, on Thursday appointed Ronojoy Dutta as its CEO. Ronojoy will remain IndiGo CEO for the next five years. In addition to Ronojoy Dutta's appointment, InterGlobe Aviation Limited also approved the appointment of Meleveetil Damodaran as chairman. Both the appointments will come into effect from today itself i.e. Jan. 24, according to InterGlobe's statement. 

Earlier, InterGlobe Aviation Ltd-owned India's biggest airline by market share, IndiGo, had posted a 75 per cent fall in its third-quarter profit to Rs 190.89 crore due to high fuel prices and rupee depreciation, the airline said on Wednesday. According to a BSE filing, the profit in the year-ago quarter was Rs 762.03 crore. "Profitability was majorly impacted by the adverse impact of high fuel prices and rupee depreciation," the company said. Aircraft fuel expenses bloated 69 per cent from Rs 2,016 crore in the third quarter of 2017-18 to Rs 3,410 crore in the third quarter of current fiscal 2018-19. However, revenue from operations shot up 28 per cent to Rs 7,916.22 crore in the quarter ended December 2018 as against Rs 6,177.88 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. Income from other sources also went up to Rs 313.15 crore from Rs 231.07 crore, a rise of 35 per cent year-on-year, as per the BSE filing.

IndiGo co-founder and interim CEO Rahul Bhatia said, "We have posted a profit of Rs 1.9 billion in a continued difficult environment and have grown our fleet by one aircraft a week for a 33 per cent capacity increase for the quarter. Very few airlines around the world have the operational resilience to absorb such rapid growth." 

As of December 31, the airline's fleet of 208 aircraft including 127 A320ceos, 66 A320neos, one A321neo and 14 ATRs reflected a net increase of 19 aircraft during the quarter. IndiGo had a total cash balance of Rs 14,136 crore comprising Rs 4,618 crore of free cash and Rs 9,518 million of restricted cash, as on December 31. "The total debt of Rs 2,475 crore is aircraft related," IndiGo added.