IndiGo moves beyond Stretch seats with lie-flat Business Class plans
First 10 A350s to be delivered from second quarter of 2028 will have 16 flat beds, while future A350s could have more; future XLRs too will have flat beds, said CEO William Walsh
Willie Walsh. File
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.
“The first A350 is due to be delivered in the second quarter of 2028. It will come with 16 flat beds in the business class cabin. We will have a premium economy cabin, and an economy cabin,” William Walsh told journalists at a press meet. 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.
“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. 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. Widebody operations have been suspended since November 1. XLRs are now operating the Amsterdam route.
Not just the widebodies, lie flat beds will also be seen on some the extra-long narrowbodies of IndiGo.
“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.”
IndiGo has taken the delivery of 4 A321 XLRs so far, and will add three more next year. IndiGo has an order book of 40 XLRs, and took the delivery of its first XLR in January 2026. Apart from Mumbai-Amsterdam, IndiGo uses the XLR to fly to Athens, Denpasar, Istanbul. ENDS
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