Earlier this year, IndiGo announced their order for 50 of the ATR series planes, which would be contributing to the launch of the IndiGo Regional operations. Then, a few days ago we heard about the plans that were baking in for IndiGo on their regional operations. 

Last night, IndiGo formally announced the launch of their operations, and the first tickets have begun to be sold as well. Indigo will launch their ATR operations on December 21, 2017, with one ATR plane, and two more will be added quickly to the rotations. This was the announcement that went out last night.

The plan for Indigo is to introduce ATR flights on the existing network which includes Chennai, Mangalore, Hyderabad and Nagpur in addition to Tier-II & Tier-III cities of Vijaywada, Tirupati, Madurai and Rajahmundry.

On December 21, 2017, they will have the first ATR, and it will operate as per the following rotation:

• 6E7101 Hyderabad – Mangalore 06:40/08:40
• 6E7101 Mangalore – Chennai 09:05/11:05
• 6E7102 Chennai – Mangalore 11:35/13:30
• 6E7102 Mangalore – Hyderabad 13:50/15:40
• 6E7103 Hyderabad – Nagpur 16:15/18:10
• 6E7104 Nagpur – Hyderabad 18:30/20:25

Additionally, Indigo will add the second and third plane in January 2018, and these planes will go on the following rotations: Hyderabad, Tirupati and Bengaluru for the second on January 9, 2018, and Hyderabad, Rajahmundry, Bengaluru and Chennai for the third one on January 18, 2018. The full schedule is here.

Tickets are up for sale last night. They were supposed to go on sale at midnight, but Aditya Ghosh wanted to deliver an on-time message so he flicked the switch at about 10 pm itself.

. @IndiGo6E ATR ticket sales now LIVE! Said midnight but we are open for sale already! On Time is a Wonderful but BeforeTime is even better! pic.twitter.com/KuZ8uVU3BY

— Aditya Ghosh (@AdityaGhosh6E) October 16, 2017

Bottomline

Huge congratulations to IndiGo to get this going. There have been others before them. Air India runs a nice regional operation with 16 ATR aircraft, Jet Airways has 13 of them which they are trying to get rid of now, Spicejet has 22 Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 already in service and has a firm order of another 25 of them.

What is wonderful, however, is that IndiGo is getting a lot of mindshare for their ATR operations, and this combined with the UDAN initiative of the government, will help to connect a lot of small towns to the aviation map, which is a great thing!

Have you booked yourselves on the Indigo ATR flights? Do share where are you planning your first Indigo ATR trip?