The international plans of New Delhi-registered low-cost carrier, SpiceJet, have been delayed by three months till August.
“We had earlier planned to start our international operations from June, which could not work out for various reasons. Now, we plan to start our international operations from August,” Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Agarwal told Business Standard.
The airline plans to start with one flight per day to Dhaka from August and follow it up with one flight per day to Kathmandu from September.
SpiceJet has recently received permission to operate flights to the capital cities of Nepal, Bangladesh and Maldives. It has also applied for permission to fly to Colombo, which was turned down by the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
“We do not have a fixed timeline for starting our services to Maldives. The plan will start only when we receive the delivery of new planes,” Agarwal said.
The airline, which is to take the delivery of three aircraft this financial year, is due to receive two airplanes by the end of this calendar year and the third in February 2011.
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The airline became eligible to fly internationally from May 23. Any Indian airline which completes five years of flying in the domestic network and has a fleet of 20 aircraft is eligible to fly internationally.
Agarwal also said the airline planned to fly internationally so that it could increase the utilisation of its fleet. Its fleet utilisation was at 12.5 hours, which it planned to increase by two hours after it started international operations.
The airline had earlier announced that its fares in the international sector would be around 15 per cent less than its competitors.
SpiceJet will be the country’s first low-cost airline to fly abroad, if one excludes Air India Express — part of Air India and a low-cost, short-haul operator which only operates abroad. GoAir, the other low-cost carrier completing five years of flying in India, has no plans to fly abroad and has only eight aircraft.
Paramount Airways also completes five years in 2010 and aims to fly abroad from August, but it has only five aircraft, way below the minimum requirement of 20.
IndiGo, which completes five years of flying in India in August next year and has a fleet of 25 aircraft now, has also applied to the ministry for permission to start international operations.
Among the three listed airlines, SpiceJet became the only airline to make profit in the last financial year. It made a profit of Rs 61 crore for the first time since its inception and has also registered an increase of over 34 per cent in passenger revenues.