Late last week, SpiceJet came up with a presentation for potential investors as it looks to raise ₹3,000 crore to remain a going concern after multiple brushes with near-death scenarios.
The last week saw Carlyle Aviation Management Limited convert its debt to equity. The airline has more aircraft grounded than operational, by its own admission and a look at flight tracking website Flightradar24’s data shows that some of its damp/wet-leased aircraft aren’t operational either, for reasons best known to the airline.
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SpiceJet’s plan for ungrounding, expanding and repaying debt before taking steps towards growth hinges on raising funds. It has blamed the pandemic as well as global grounding of the MAX aircraft for its current financial situation.
That begs the question: Is SpiceJet still attractive? That may not have a specific answer just yet but it is talking about access to many monopoly routes under Viability Gap Funding and rights allocated (but unused) including those to London Heathrow as part of its investor presentation which will be key to reach some valuation.
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The airline, now part of enhanced surveillance by the regulator has seen its operational fleet reduce to less than 20 aircraft in a few days, protests for delayed salaries and has not paid statutory dues for the last few quarters. Amidst this sea of troubles, the airline continues to record high load factors for months, though that is slightly changing in recent days in sync with an On Time Performance, which is dropping drastically.
Where is the airline flying in India?
Data shared by Cirium, exclusively for this article shows that SpiceJet is scheduled to operate on 91 city pairs within India. This is just 8% of total routes in operation in India, which now stands at 1112 routes.
SpiceJet once enjoyed monopoly on multiple routes. However, this is today down to only RCS – UDAN routes.
Out of the 91 routes where SpiceJet operates, 17 are monopoly routes – almost all of which are under RCS-UDAN scheme. These 18% of the total routes help the airline gain the much needed viability gap funding from the government which ensures cashflow. These routes involve flights to Darbhanga from Delhi and Mumbai, to Bhavnagar from Mumbai and Pune, to Kandla from Mumbai; Delhi to Khajuraho and Shillong and to Tezpur from Kolkata.
It has all but vacated the metro routes with a token presence left on Mumbai-Delhi-Mumbai. However, the business routes are known to give the edge in pricing with high last minute fares, yet SpiceJet has consistently managed to have a high RASK (Revenue per Available Seat Kilometre).
It continues to focus on slot-constrained airports or seasonal routes like those to Srinagar, Leh, or Pune where adding flights rapidly is not possible for competition. With IndiGo and Air India Express inducting capacity rapidly, it will definitely come under more pressure across the country.
The second biggest operational airport in the SpiceJet network is outside India
Believe it or not, Dubai has become the second largest airport in the SpiceJet network with 75 departures a week, many of which are monopoly routes like Pune – Dubai. This gives the airline the ability to price itself higher than other routes with similar stage length but which are hyper competitive.
The airline which once had once spread to Italy and Hong Kong has been sitting on rights to multiple places but unable to start operations due to lack of cash.
What should you do if you are booking SpiceJet?
The airline is constantly recording one of the lowest On Time Performance in Indian skies. However, the data declared shows OTP of only four metro airports and not the entire network. With a thin network, not all of SpiceJet’s flights are counted for OTP. This could be double edged with some flights flying on time but not being captured as part of OTP, on the other hand – some very late departures may not be tracked either.
It will be wise to check the flight status multiple times before leaving for the airport and stay updated about the operations. There have been cases of protests by the staff and news reports indicating disputes with fuel marketing companies and airports delaying flights, none of which were elaborated in detail by either of the parties.