IndiGo is going all-in on flat-bed business-class seats for its Airbus A350 widebodies, due to enter service in the second quarter of 2028, as well as for its future A321XLRs, according to its CEO William Walsh.
It will come with 16 flat beds in the business class cabin. The airline has locked down the configuration for the first 10 A350s out of a total of 60 on order, but the number of lie-flat business class seats could go up in the future. Widebody operations have been suspended since November 1.
“The first A350 is due to be delivered in the second quarter of 2028. Stretch seats are offered on domestic trunk routes and some international services. The widebody Boeing 787s used on European routes, including Manchester, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and London, were wet-leased from Norse and arrived with a preconfigured cabin that did not include Stretch seats. XLRs are now operating the Amsterdam route.
We will have a premium economy cabin, and an economy cabin,” William Walsh told journalists at a press meet. “We are debating whether we would look at increasing the number of flatbeds in the business class cabin going forward,” Walsh added showing full confidence in flatbeds, in departure from his predecessor Pieter Elbers who launched the Stretch product in November 2024, which IndiGo called a “custom-made” business class seat that has only a 12 cm recline, and an eye-level partition instead of a full parition. “In the future aircraft , we will have flatbeds in the XLR,” said Walsh. Not wanting to criticise his predecessor’s Stretch gamble, Walsh said, it was doing extremely well in the domestic, as well as in the international market “but it was also clear to us that to serve the longer haul international market we needed to have flatbeds as part of the business class product.
That’s what the customer expects today.”
