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19 March 2024

SpiceJet plans flights from Dubai to Hyderabad, Jaipur and Kannur

Published
By Parag Deulgaonkar

 India’s budget airline SpiceJet is planning to start flights to Hyderabad and Jaipur from Dubai, with the aim to increase frequency of its flights to existing destinations, according to company Chairman.

“We have eight flights a day from Dubai and we want to increase it to 15 flights a day in coming quarters. We are looking to increase frequency to our existing destinations in India and add new destinations such as Hyderabad and Jaipur,” Ajay Singh said on Sunday.

 Flights to Amritsar are set to commence on a daily basis from the current six days, with the airline also evaluating the possibility of flying to Kannur International Airport.

 Singh revealed that the company was set to order more than 150 planes in the current financial year (FY2015-2016).

“We will order in excess of 150 single-aisle jets aircraft and we hope do that in this financial year itself and we are negotiating with the aircraft manufacturers.”

He ruled out the possibility of a dilution in its equity stake, saying, “We are generating enough money internally and we have unused credit lines that could be utilised to pay for the aircraft.”

# Dubai incredibly important

 Emphasising that Dubai was an “incredibly important market” for the airline, Singh said the emirate was its international base as it was carrying 100,000 passengers to and from Dubai.

 The biggest challenge for the airline, which almost shut down in December 2014, was regaining consumer confidence.

“Not only have we regained the consumer confidence, we have inducted six planes, increased our capacity by 17 per cent and have increased our flights from 250 to 298 flights a day. Despite this massive increase in capacity in one month, our load factor has not gone down, but has gone up.”

The airline carried nearly 12 million passengers during fiscal year 2015 and flies to 40 destinations, which includes 34 domestic destination and six international destinations. It has a fleet of 25 Boeing 737NG, two Airbus A320 and 14 Bombardier Q-400s.