Airline company SpiceJet, which is facing cash crunch, has decided to reduce its weekly flight operations by 26% in the upcoming summer schedule. According to the company, due to shortage of pilots and increase in aircraft lease fares, there is difficulty in increasing flight operations.
The summer schedule for 2024 will begin March 31 and end October 26. During this period, the airline will operate only 1,657 flights as compared to 2,240 flights in the current winter schedule.
Earlier, in the summer schedule of 2023, the company had applied for 2,132 planned flights, which was about 30% less than the same period a year ago i.e. 2022.
According to a company official, despite applying for more flights in the last winter schedule, the airline could not utilize the airport slots i.e. could not operate all the planned flights. Therefore, to avoid this, it has been decided to reduce the planned flights this time.
Last year, between July 5 and July 19, the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had ordered the airline to reduce flights by 50% after about 8 incidents of technical glitches were reported in many of the company's flights.
SpiceJet has a fleet of 33 operational flights. It has eight wet-lease aircraft. The airline currently has around 400 pilots on its payroll. If the new FDTL (Flight Duty Time Limitation) norm will be implemented from June, 60 to 90 additional pilots will be required to operate the same number of flights.
Earlier on February 12, the company had informed about the plan to lay off 10-15% of its total work-force i.e. about 1,400 employees as part of the cost cutting process. Then, a SpiceJet spokesperson had said, 'SpiceJet has initiated several measures following the recent fund infusion as part of our turnaround and cost cutting strategy.
Its objective is to achieve profitable growth and position itself to take advantage of opportunities in the Indian aviation industry. Through this initiative, we expect annual savings of up to Rs 100 crore.
