Spicejet, which has been facing an existence crisis, has been not exactly in the pink of health recently. They’ve started cancelling flights while returning planes, and then were asked to close in bookings to one month only by the Government of India.
Just earlier this week they were knocking on the doors of Government of India to speak to them, and the government offered them the following way forward:
- Spicejet can now take bookings till March 31, 2015
- Airports Authority of India would wait another fortnight for their payments
- Oil marketing companies who supply fuel to SG were asked to provide fuel on credit till December 31, 2014.
- They can raise short term loans of upto INR 600 Crores backed by guarantees from the promoters
- Long term FDI is expected to come in within 8 weeks
- Working capital can also be raised outside India as a special situation
However, it turns out their operations have been grounded since this morning. This is how FlightRadar24 showed up the Indian airspace when I filtered for Spicejet.
It is reported that they are not being sold fuel anymore, and hence have not been able to operate any flights since the morning. Hence, multiple cancellations have happened across India since morning.
The COO of the airline announced on Twitter that they should be able to resolve the situation by this afternoon and flights scheduled after 4 pm IST would operate as normal.
Flights scheduled to depart on or after 4pm today will operate. We apologize again for the disruptions.
— Sanjiv Kapoor (@SKapoorSpiceJet) December 17, 2014
The airline’s website carries no information about this nor a statement.
The promoters on the other hand, have started to raise their hands. In various news reports such as this one, the theme is common, We’ve done enough for Spicejet in terms of funding.
We do not have the liquidity to invest large sums at the time which is why we need bank financing. For which the promoters are willing to provide a guarantee. We cannot do more than this.
If any of you are in this situation, maybe it is a good idea to reschedule proactively or book yourself on another carrier.
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4 pm rolls around and a grand total of 1 spicejet aircraft is in the air !