Paris-based aerospace technology major Thales has signed a strategic maintenance contract with IndiGo for its existing fleet of 430 Airbus A320 family aircraft and future order of over 800 aircraft.

As part of this 11-year contract, Thales will provide India’s biggest airline IndiGo with repair services for avionics components, coupled with Thales’s ‘Avionics-By-The-Hour’ (ABTH) programme - a spares management solution that ensures the availability of critical components to minimise aircraft downtime.

“This, together with Thales’s ‘Repair-By-The-Hour’ (RBTH), guarantees timely maintenance for avionics, allowing IndiGo to increase the availability of its fleet and expedite repairs,” the global aerospace technology company said in a statement.

Repairs will be managed at Thales’s new avionics MRO facility in Gurugram, India, located near the Delhi airport, which is designed to handle the increasing demand for avionics support, featuring advanced technology to streamline repair processes and ensure high levels of fleet availability, the statement said.

The contract comes at a time when IndiGo is charting a new path to gain a bigger share of international travellers flying in and out of the country. “For way too long, international traffic for India has been outsourced to hubs outside the geographical shores of India. This is a good time for India to start building those hubs,” IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers told Fortune India earlier this year.

While IndiGo’s international journey began way back in 2011 with its first flights to the UAE, the airline made its long-haul debut to Amsterdam and Manchester in July 2025. The long-haul foray comes even as IndiGo awaits delivery of long-range Airbus A321 XLR and A350-900 aircraft.

IndiGo, which is set to receive the country’s first Airbus A321 XLR by the end of this year, will operate direct flights from India to Greece’s capital city Athens from January 2026. IndiGo has also announced the launch of flights between Mumbai and Copenhagen, starting October 8, 2025. IndiGo will operate thrice weekly flights on the route using its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft, taken on wet lease from Norse Atlantic Airways. Copenhagen will be IndiGo’s 44th international destination.

IndiGo has also extended a five-year contract with AvioBook, a Thales company, for AvioBook Flight —the only Electronic Flight Bag solution currently authorised for paperless operations by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

“In use across the entire IndiGo fleet for over a year, AvioBook Flight has already helped significantly reduce consumption of paper usage annually thereby advancing environmental sustainability goals and streamlining flight operations on over 2,000 flights every day,” the company said.

“With IndiGo’s growing scale and fleet, this association aligns with our commitment to offer a hassle-free and safe flying experience to our customers, while ensuring operational excellence and reliability,” said Parichay Datta, Senior Vice-president, Engineering, IndiGo.

“This strategic partnership with IndiGo underscores our commitment to delivering airline world-class avionics support and services. Our new MRO facility in India increases Thales’s ability to provide a swift, reliable service, backed by the power of our global organisation, to meet the evolving demands of the Indian aviation industry,” said Thomas Got, Vice President, Aviation Global Services, Thales.