IndiGo’s 2024 surprise was the addition of a Business Class cabin to their aircraft and the order of A350-900 aircraft. Now, IndiGo is in the news for free hot meals and a lot more on their 2025 agenda. Apart from being the presenting airline for the 2025 IATA AGM in Delhi, they just announced their first bunch of long-haul routes, to Manchester and Amsterdam from Mumbai.

IndiGo to offer free hot meals to everyone

IndiGo has been offering free dry meals to corporate customers for a long while. Last year, they started the Stretch cabin, and a cold vegetarian meal box is being offered to everyone in the cabin now, with the meals being curated by Oberoi Flight Services.

Next up, IndiGo has now started to up the game. On the flights announced to Bangkok, there is no free meal service except for the cabin they are selling as Stretch. In today’s announcement, however, IndiGo has finally started to offer meals to all passengers on board their flights to Manchester and Amsterdam.

These will be all hot meals, and I imagine these will be two services (one full meal and one light meal), although I haven’t found the flight meal descriptors to be able to confirm this. The meals uplifted will be Vegetarian, but if you prebook a non-vegetarian meal, it will be uplifted for you as well at no extra charge.

These were the meals IndiGo put on sale for their route to Turkey early on. I’m not sure if they still offer the same meals or a higher calibre, but this was the starting point.

In the Economy Cabin, only soft drinks will be served complimentary, and alcohol will be payable separately. In the Business Cabin, however, a choice of meals will be available and alcohol as well. Though too early to say if they will serve unlimited alcohol or budget that for business cabin passengers as well.

Lots of Baggage Allowance

IndiGo is going to be one-upping Air India and other carriers by offering a 30 kg baggage allowance in economy, compared to 23 kg offered by Air India and others to their passengers back of the bus. In Business Class, the allowance will be 46 kilos, which is standard for the cabin.

Lounge Access

In another surprise, IndiGo has provisioned lounge access at Mumbai, Schiphol and Manchester for those booking the Stretch Cabin. Remember, each flight has 56 Stretch seats, so that is a lot of passengers to be accounted for in the Lounge before taking them to the plane. I’m almost sure that in Mumbai, the lounge will be Adani’s Business Class East lounge and not the West lounge, but it is a huge coming of age for an airline that never offered the frills. Remember, the perk is exclusive to the Mumbai-Europe Intercontinental flights, not the ones on the Delhi-Bangkok rotation.

Bottomline

IndiGo is premiumising pretty quickly, with hot meals for everyone, alcohol for their premium customers and lounge and generous baggage allowance for everyone as well in the coming days. These are huge steps for the passenger experience, and ultimately will carry on to their own experience on the A350 as well as maybe the A321XLR in some shape or form?

What do you think of IndiGo’s premium avatar?

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