India's biggest airline is nudging up the price of nearly everything that isn't the seat itself. IndiGo, the country's dominant low-cost carrier, has raised fees across a batch of optional services — and while each increase looks small on its own, together they signal a clear strategy: protect the headline fare, monetise everything around it.
The changes touch some surprisingly everyday add-ons. Flying with an infant on your lap (children from three days to two years old, no separate seat) now costs INR 3,000, up from INR 2,000 — roughly a 50% jump in dollar terms, from about $21 to $31. Excess baggage on domestic routes has gone up to INR 800 per kilogram from INR 700. Priority check-in and boarding, sold as the Fast Forward service, has also been repriced, along with fees for unaccompanied minors and travel certificates.
None of this turns IndiGo into a premium airline overnight — a few dollars here and there won't derail a domestic hop. But it matters for anyone who travels with kids, packs heavy, or likes skipping queues. Families in particular should recalculate: an infant fee plus a couple of excess-kilo charges can quietly add the equivalent of a second fare to a short domestic flight.
The timing is interesting too. The fee hikes land as IndiGo enters what's being called the Willie Walsh era — a reference to the veteran airline executive now overseeing the carrier's direction. Walsh built his reputation at IAG on disciplined, margin-focused leadership, and squeezing more revenue from ancillaries while holding base fares steady is a textbook move from that playbook. For a low-cost carrier, the seat price is the marketing; the extras are the profit.
For travellers, the practical takeaway is simple: IndiGo's advertised fares remain genuinely low, but your total trip cost depends more than ever on how you fly. Weigh your bags before you leave for the airport, decide early whether Fast Forward is worth the extra rupees on a tight connection, and factor infant and child fees into family budgets rather than treating them as an afterthought. The fare on the search results page is no longer the whole story — if it ever was.