The carrier is planning to bring in its fold several Tier I and II towns through the new aircraft.
SpiceJet, South-based budget airline, may finally see a game changer with the fleet of its newly acquired Q400 aircraft from Bombardier.
The carrier is planning to bring in its fold several Tier I and II towns through the new aircraft.
“The Q400s are going to emerge as a game changer for SpiceJet. We are going to connect several Tier II and III destinations with these aircraft, which would have a positive impact on the revenues and the bottomline of the company,” Neil Mills, SpiceJet’s CEO, said.
The Q400 aircraft has 78 seats and is best suited for short-haul routes. SpiceJet had placed an order for 30 Q400s and the company has already taken delivery of five.
The aircraft would be put into service from September 21 with the company connecting 12 popular Tier II and III destinations including Aurangabad, Bhopal, Goa, Indore, Madurai, Mangalore, Nagpur, Pune, Rajahmundry, Tirupati, Thiruvananthapuram and Vijayawada. The company is expecting the delivery of another 15 planes by July next year.
“We are expecting a load factor of 75% on these planes and we would be doing about 100 flights a day by March end. SpiceJet would have the lowest seat cost in the regional market,” he said.
SpiceJet is expecting the operations through Q400 to break even in the next 12-18 months.
“We don’t expect these operations to trigger any price war. But the rates are going to be very competitive. We are not going to charge `15,000 or so, on any route,” he said. On the other hand, Mills claimed that SpiceJet was a victim of irrational pricing by some of the airlines.
“There are two issues that are coming in the way of making SpiceJet profitable: Higher fuel price and irrational pricing by the competition. If these two issues are handled, we should be profitable,” he said. The Q400 planes believed to offer various benefits to SpiceJet including faster turnaround time. According to a company official, a Q400 operates like a jet though it is a turboprop. “It goes at higher altitudes. There is less noise in the cabin and has other benefits like allowing more cabin baggage in addition to not using the conventional ladder to deplane the passengers,” he said.
“SpiceJet is going to use Hyderabad as a southern hub connecting various Tier II and III routes. While that is going to use more passengers to the airport, we are expecting the total passenger number at the airport to be at 8.8 million this year,” Vikram Jaisinghani, CEO of GMR Hyderabad International Airports, said.
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