India's top airline says wait for new planes limiting growth

India's biggest airline IndiGo said on Wednesday the wait for new planes was limiting its growth during a strong pick-up in demand for air travel as pandemic restrictions are lifted. "I wish we had more aircraft," outgoing CE Ronojoy Dutta told analysts after the company reported a narrowing of losses for the June quarter from a year ago. "The travel market is growing quite strongly. We are limited by the number of aircraft we have. Given that, we will try and push load factors (filling available seats), but if we had more aircraft we would fly to more destinations," Dutta said. IndiGo has 730 A320neo planes on order from Airbus (AIR.PA), making it the world's biggest customer for this popular single-aisle model. But planemakers face challenges meeting delivery schedules due to supply chain problems. Dutta said IndiGo did not want to lease older planes. The company reported its highest ever quarterly revenue for the three months ended June 30, boosted by a 145% increase in capacity and a load factor of about 80%. But soaring fuel costs and exchange rate moves left IndiGo making a loss. The company said fuel prices almost doubled, leading to a near five-fold increase in aircraft fuel expenses to 59.90b Indian rupees ($756m). However, yields, a metric of profitability, rose 50.3% to 5.24 rupees per km as airlines raised fares.<br/>