New Delhi: SpiceJet’s ambitious plans of going regional are facing some headwinds. The airline is beginning to realise the difficulties attached with such an operation, which mostly runs on wafer-thin margins. Now, not only is it in two minds over whether to order more Q400 aircraft from Bombardier to step up further, but it has already decided not to sell connections to smaller, regional destinations serviced by the existing aircraft.
This means that if a passenger wants to fly from Delhi or Mumbai to Tirupati - which is one of the regional destinations on the SpiceJet Q400 route - he will have to buy a ticket to Hyderabad and another from Hyderabad to Tirupati and wait in Hyderabad for the next available flight to Tirupati instead of getting a seamless connection on a single ticket from the original destination.
A senior airline official says this only indicates that SpiceJet is staying cautious in the dynamics of regional operations. “The low-cost airline business anyway offers at best 6-7% margins. Regional routes have very thin traffic; besides, we need to increase the aircraft utilisation across our fleet. So, the best solution to this issue is to not sell connections on regional aircraft. In a sense, we are not really a regional airline right now, but then, we are following a smart strategy,” he added.
09/11/11 Sindhu Bhattacharya/Daily News & Analysis
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