Friday, September 18th, 2026
Welcome to Quests Daily | Your Compass for the Day in Travel.
The Lead Story: IndiGo Raises Family and Baggage Charges as Ancillary Pricing Gets More Important
IndiGo has revised charges across three parts of the passenger journey, increasing the fee for infants under two by ₹1,000, raising standard child ticket charges by ₹999, and adding ₹100 per kg to excess checked-baggage rates. The revised tariffs are now effective under the airline’s updated travel terms. The increases leave the base airfare untouched while making specific travel requirements more expensive, particularly for families and passengers checking baggage beyond the included allowance. IndiGo’s current fee table also shows how extensively the airline now separates optional services and baggage from the core ticket, giving it multiple pricing levers outside the headline fare.
IndiGo’s FY26 numbers give that fee reset more context. Full-year yield fell 1.7%, while unit costs excluding fuel and foreign exchange rose 3.8%. In the March quarter, passenger-ticket revenue declined 0.7% year-on-year even as ancillary revenue increased 9.2%. The company reported an FY26 net loss of ₹23.9 billion after foreign-exchange and exceptional effects, although profit excluding those items remained ₹75.0 billion. Ancillary pricing has also become a regulatory issue: airlines including IndiGo pushed back earlier this year against a proposed rule requiring at least 60% of seats to be selectable without charge, and the government subsequently put that requirement on hold. Against softer yields and higher underlying costs, raising charges attached to specific passenger needs gives IndiGo another way to increase revenue per booking without immediately moving the lowest visible fare.
The Briefing:
Klook Moves Deeper Into Vietnam’s Destination Funnel:
Klook has signed MOUs with Vinpearl and Sun Hospitality & Entertainment covering marketing, product development, expansion, data-sharing and performance reviews. Its recent Vietnam creator summit also brought together more than 120 creators from 17 markets. The platform is moving further upstream from selling attractions into helping create, market and measure destination demand itself.Etihad Pairs New Tashkent Capacity With Destination Marketing:
Etihad has signed a tourism cooperation agreement with Uzbekistan after launching daily Abu Dhabi–Tashkent flights in August. Its codeshare with Uzbekistan Airways also provides onward access to eight domestic destinations. Air access, distribution and destination promotion are being built together rather than treating the new route as a standalone capacity addition.Bihar Commits ₹3,516 Crore to Gaya’s Pilgrimage Infrastructure:
The state has approved ₹2,520 crore for the Vishnupad Temple complex and ₹996.05 crore for the Son–Falgu River Linking Project, alongside moves to expand regional air connectivity. The investment shifts Gaya’s tourism proposition toward higher-capacity visitor infrastructure around an already established pilgrimage flow.Malaysia Plans for AirAsia Capacity Risk:
Malaysia has held scenario-planning discussions with Malaysia Airlines and Batik Air over their ability to absorb AirAsia traffic, according to Reuters. AirAsia says it holds about 60% of Malaysia’s domestic market; it recorded an 831 million ringgit second-quarter loss as jet-fuel costs jumped sharply. A financial problem at that scale quickly becomes a national capacity and connectivity problem when one carrier controls most domestic flying.
Airbus Gets Fresh Funding for a Hydrogen Bet That Has Moved Further Out
What happened: Airbus’ ZEROe research is among 19 projects selected to share €290 million in the latest EU Clean Aviation funding round. The support keeps hydrogen-related aircraft technology moving through a period in which Airbus has narrowed its preferred propulsion route toward hydrogen fuel cells. Its existing Airbus-led FAME programme is developing fuel-cell propulsion systems for larger aircraft, with nearly €35 million in EU contribution already committed to that project.
Why it matters: Hydrogen aviation has moved from an aggressive aircraft-launch timetable toward a longer technology-development cycle. Airbus revised its ZEROe roadmap after concluding fuel cells offered the most promising route, while Clean Aviation has acknowledged slower-than-expected progress across the wider hydrogen ecosystem. Fresh public funding therefore matters less as a near-term aircraft launch signal and more as a way to keep expensive storage, distribution, fuel-cell and aircraft-integration work advancing until the technology is mature enough for commercial programme decisions. Hydrogen remains in the aviation decarbonisation portfolio, but the investment horizon is increasingly measured in technology readiness rather than fleet-entry dates.
Visual- Stat of the Day:
Takeaway: Delhi rose 11 places to rank 28th in OAG’s 2026 global Megahubs index and is the only Indian airport inside the international Top 50. It ranks ninth in Asia-Pacific, behind hubs including Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong. OAG’s index measures how effectively an airport converts its network into viable connections, rather than simply how many passengers or seats it handles. Delhi’s climb shows stronger hub functionality, but the absence of another Indian airport from the Top 50 also exposes the gap between India’s rapidly growing aviation scale and its ability to turn that scale into internationally competitive connecting networks.
Etihad Wants a Bigger Share of the Trip, Not Just the Flight:
Case: Etihad Escapes will launch in October, initially allowing passengers who already have an Etihad flight booking to add hotel accommodation directly through Etihad.com. The airline plans to broaden the platform through 2027 to include more travel services and integrate it further into the Etihad app and Etihad Guest. The product moves Etihad beyond selling transport toward managing more of the traveller’s itinerary inside its own digital environment.
Where it helps: The opportunity is in what happens after the flight sale. Keeping hotel discovery and booking inside Etihad’s journey gives the airline another transaction after the ticket, while creating a clearer path to connect accommodation, loyalty and eventually additional services around the same customer. That can make the airline relationship extend beyond origin-to-destination transport and turn existing flight demand into a broader travel basket without requiring Etihad to acquire the customer again for every component.
Risk: The first version remains narrow: customers need to have already booked an Etihad flight before adding accommodation. Until the planned app, loyalty and wider-service integrations arrive, Escapes may operate more like a post-booking hotel attachment than a full trip-planning platform. Execution will depend on whether the expanded product can make booking additional services inside Etihad materially easier than leaving the airline environment to shop elsewhere.
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