What is up with Spicejet?

What is going on with Spicejet? I can see that airline has reduced lots of flight and doesn’t even appear as an option on portals like MMT for various destinations.

I had several cheap flights on Spicejet during their early days

• Chennai-Colombo for 4000 INR return
• Chennai-Vijayawada, Chennai-Goa for around 1500 Return
• Chennai-Port Blair for 5000 return
• Kolkata-Dhaka for 8000 return in 2019

But the current Spicejet situation feels very grim.

Some observations

• Spicejet doesn’t have direct flight between Mumbai and Bengaluru, one of the high demand, popular sectors- only 1 stop via Goa
• No more BLR-MAA, MAA-HYD, Chennai- Coimbatore, Chennai-Colombo, Kolkata-Dhaka, MAA-CNN etc
• Some airports are completely abandoned: no flights to Mangalore, Vijayawada, Rajamundri, Mysuru, Pondy etc
• Operating very few direct flights, with very less frequency (like only 1 or 2 per day compared to 3-4 or more departures earlier)- DEL-HYD, DEL-BLR, BLR-CCU
• On many sectors their price is more than what full service carriers Air India or Vistara would charge. So no motive for passengers to book on Spicejet and their name doesn’t appear on top of search results say on MMT or other travel sites
• Some sectors it feels Spicejet is focusing heavily- like 5 daily flights between Srinagar and Delhi
• Few sectors are still being served- Hyd-Pondicherry, Delhi-Gangtok etc, which is good
• Some international sections are still operating- like BOM-DXB

What next for SpiceJet?

Hopefully Spicejet will survive longer as now they have reduced their operations. With a smaller fleet, focused on profitable routes, if they can sustain and win back customer faith they will be able to bounce back.

Negative publicity adversely affects airlines. Once passengers feel that the airline is not safe or not reliable, they will avoid the airline even if their tickets are a few hundred rupees cheaper. No one wants to see their flight canceled last minute or face a safety issue trying to save a few hundred rupees. So winning the perception battle will be tough for airlines.

With Akasa air winning everyone’s confidence and expanding their fleet rapidly, feels like people have almost forgotten spicejet. Only dancing reels made by Spicejet cabin crew is keeping people’s knowledge of the airline active.

As per Spicejet’s website they have about 59 737s (of different configurations/sub variants) and 32 Q400s. My guess is not all of them are fully operational else Spicejet could have scheduled much more flights. Because with over 90 aircrafts Spicejet is flying to and from around only 49 airports around India. Given that each aircraft makes several flights each day touching multiple airports, if Spicejet is serving only 49 airports I think more than half their fleet is out of action- probably cannibalized to repair other aircrafts or taken back by lessors due to non payment of dues. (just a wild guess, hard to be precise as it is not a one aircraft-one airport match). Another reason could be not being able to pay pilots and other crew required to operate an aircraft. (read this TOI news)

As per this news, Spicejet Management is putting up a brave face and giving a positive outlook.

Contextual image-Spicejet Bombardier ready to land in Mysore

Spicejet has already bounced back once- from a near bankruptcy back to normal, so they can do it again. We can keep some hope.

What do you think? Will you fly Spicejet for your next trip?