SpiceJet, one of India’s low cost carriers, has been working pretty hard under the hood to go back up in the aviation game. When I last flew them, which was at least 15 months back, my flights were so horribly delayed and so tardily handled that I stopped flying them.

However, since earlier this year, I have been hearing good things about various aspects of flying on SpiceJet. There has been a good On Time Performance posted for a few months in a row, and they have some good meals to buy inside the plane, and of course, all the sales they keep doing to bring in more passengers over to their planes.

One of the new initiatives in this regard is the on-time guarantee the airline has introduced from today onwards.

As a part of the on-time guarantee, SpiceJet is going to give out vouchers to passengers who will be delayed for over 60 minutes, and where the reasons for delay were under SpiceJet’s control. The guarantee gets you a voucher worth INR 500 for delays between 60-119 minutes, and INR 1000 for delays beyond 120 minutes or cancellations. You can use your vouchers for your next flight with SpiceJet, and these flights need to be booked online.

Like such guarantees work, there is a paraphernalia of terms and conditions that apply. Here are some prominent ones:

• For the purpose of calculation of the period of delay, the time will be calculated from the scheduled departure time of the flight, till the time the aircraft’s doors are closed for take-off.
• SpiceJet shall be under no obligation to provide any Voucher(s) in cases where the delay and/ or cancellations have been caused by an event(s) of Force Majeure, i.e., circumstance(s) which are beyond the control of SpiceJet and the impact of which has lead to the delay and/ or cancellation of flight(s), and which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken care of by SpiceJet. Such circumstances, may in particular, occur, including but not limited to, due to political instability, natural disaster, civil war, insurrection or riot, flood, explosion, government regulation and/ or any order affecting the aircraft, strikes and labour disputes causing cessation, slowdown or interruption of work and/ or any other factors that are beyond the control of SpiceJet.
• In the event of delay subsequently leading to cancellation, there shall be only One Voucher issued per passenger for cancellation of the flight and the Voucher value for delay shall not be clubbed, which is to be redeemed by the passenger only to whom it has been issued. The Voucher is non-transferable.
• An auto SMS will be sent to the passengers of the affected flights to log-in to a landing page on SpiceJet’s website – www.spicejet.com, to claim their Voucher. Passengers who have not provided their personal contact details at the time of booking shall have to contact SpiceJet’s Sales and Reservation Centre at +919871803333/ +919654003333 to know the details about their Voucher.
• The Voucher shall be valid for a period of 90 days, from and including the date of its issue, post which it shall automatically lapse.
• The Voucher can only be redeemed against booking made at www.spicejet.com for those passenger(s) to whom such Voucher(s) was issued.
• To redeem the Voucher, the booking shall be made at least 30 days prior to the scheduled date of travel.

Given the T&C, I would count this as an On-Time Departure Guarantee rather than an On-Time Arrival Guarantee. Also, whether this will turn out to be a marketing gimmick or a real game changer time will tell. But for the moment, full marks to SpiceJet to undertake another image improvement exercise.

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