03. Jnauary 2007


Date: 03. Jan. 2007
MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's biggest domestic airline, Jet Airways Ltd. (JET.BO), said on Tuesday it had purchased 10 Boeing 787-8 aircraft to support its international operations.
The wide-bodied 787 Dreamliner planes are scheduled for delivery between July 2011 and December 2012, Jet said.
Jet had executed the order for the aircraft "in late 2006," a senior company official said, in a deal valued at $1.48-1.58 billion at the current list price.
Source: http://www.freerepublic.com


Date: 03 Jan. 2007
SpiceJet, no-frill airlines, today decided not to hike its fares with respect to general increase in the ATF surcharge. SpiceJet was the first airline to pass the benefit to customers by cutting fuel surcharge by fifty percent on December 01 last year.
Siddhanta Sharma, CEO SpiceJet said ‘Aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices are increased by 7.4-7.8%, effective January 1, which will cost dear to company's exchequers, however, we have decided to absorb this hike, and not passing them to the customers. "Following the philosophy of saving our valuable customers from inflation, we have decided to continue the tradition of transparent policy," he added.
Source: http://www.spicejet.com

Date: 03. Jan. 2007
Oil Companies have upped jet fuel prices by Rs 1,600-1,700 from January 2. MD & CEO of Spicejet, Siddanth Sharma discusses the same and explains how this will affect the airlines.
Q. Fuel costs average about 30-35% of most aviation company’s operational expenses. How will this price hike hit you in terms of operating costs and margins?
A: Fuel costs were around 40% of our total cost and this 5% increase would translate to about 2% increase in fuel cost. That would mean that on an average our monthly cost bill would go up by about Rs 1.5 crore. Add to that the woes of holding over Delhi and Bombay due to fog and other related issues.
Q: How much of this would you actually be able to pass on?
A: To be fair to the customers, we didn’t reduce our fuel surcharge when the prices did go down in the last two months. The idea was to take a long term view or at least a medium term view of these fluctuations and then we would decide whether to pass it on, reduce it or up it.
For this month, we will maintain it and give the benefit of the fact that we didn’t pass on the reduction in the last couple of months to the customer. So we maintain it at the current level.
Q: What is the medium term view on ATF? Do you think that since crude prices are soft, you could see this as a temporary hike?
A: It is a temporary hike and what we have also requested on behalf of all the airlines to the Petroleum Ministry is to be more transparent when they price ATF.
We have realized that ATF prices are not directly related to crude prices and sometimes the costs, which are hiked, are not in proportion to the crude prices hike. At the same time when the prices are rolled back, the full benefit of price reduction is not passed on.
The Ministry has agreed to look into it and come back to us. If there is a transparent mechanism, it will probably benefit all the airlines across the board.
Q: In the second quarter of this particular financial year, you had a load factor of about 75%. How has it been through in the peak season and how much of an impact have you seen because of the delays and the cancellations of flights both from Delhi and Bombay, thanks to the fog?
A: The load factor has improved tremendously. We are now clocking around 83-84% load factor on our network. Fortunately for us, cancellations have been fewer, but needless to say, the delays have been quite a bit and that has thrown not only the customers into a bit of problem, but also our recovery process from these delays over the next few days.
Source: http://news.moneycontrol.com


Date: 03. Jan. 2007
BANGALORE: SpiceJet Ltd, one of the most efficiently run low-cost airlines, seems to be becoming a favourite poaching ground for senior executives by other budget carriers.
Just when the lean season is about to set in, the airline has lost two of its senior executives to rivals IndiGo and GoAir.
The company’s chief financial officer (CFO) G P Gupta and vice-president, sales & planning, Sanjay Kumar have put in their papers and will soon be taking on new responsibility at Go Air and IndiGo, respectively. Another of SpiceJet executive, Mark Winders (CEO), who had quit the airline over a year ago, joined GoAir about a week back to settle into the position held by Raj Halve (GoAir’s chief commercial officer).
Kumar said he will officially join IndiGo in the first week of February, and his new role at IndiGo will entail all aspects of network planning, pricing, revenue management, aircraft scheduling, distribution and pricing.
Source: http://www.dnaindia.com


Date: 03. Jan. 2007
India's low-cost airline SpiceJet has achieved a break-even in its first operating quarter. As per the information available, SpiceJet's first-quarter operating revenue stood at Rs 57.26 crore or US$13.01 million.
The company spent Rs 57.15 crore or US$12.98 million, resulting in a small operating profit for the company. In February this year, Royal Airways Limited had announced the launch of its new low-fares, no-frills, brand - SpiceJet. Royal Airways is the reincarnation of Modiluft, which was among the first private companies that stepped into the Indian aviation sector. It was the market leader until 1996, when it ceased its operations. Royal Airways Ltd announced that its name changed to SpiceJet Ltd on 4 May, 2005.
Among the highlights were SpiceJet selling 37,348 tickets on the first day and the airline had stated that it was the largest number of tickets sold by any airline in Asia on the first day of booking. The inaugural flight took off in May.
Last month, the airline had announced that its US$70 million FCCB issue, slotted for a Luxembourg Stock Exchange will be closed in the first week of October. SpiceJet decided to convert some of the funds into equity and thus have reduced the FCCB from US$90 million to US$70 million. Recently SpiceJet announced that on the invitation of its Board of Directors, Singapore-based MacRitchie Investments (a wholly owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings) and Istithmar the UAE private equity firm, have agreed to invest a sum of US $20m in the equity capital of the company. Among other developments, it was reported that Mark Winders, chief executive officer of SpiceJet, had put in his papers.
Source: http://deccan-airways-news.newslib.com