NEW DELHI: Reflecting the pressures of shooting price of jet fuel, low-cost carrier SpiceJet said on Wednesday that it could lose up to Rs 100 crore in the current fiscal, up from Rs 70 crore in 2007-08.
SpiceJet CEO Sidhant Sharma said the carrier has also pushed the break even point by one year to March 2010 from March 2009 earlier.
"The whole industry is facing huge loss due to the high ATF price and we expect our losses to be around Rs 80-100 crore in this financial year," Sharma said following a meeting between the CEOs of various carriers and the Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel.
He said because of the losses "we have pushed the break even point for the airline by one year to March 2010 from the earlier date of March 2009".
International aviation body Center for Asia-Pacific Aviation (CAPA) had earlier projected a collective loss of USD 2 billion for airlines in India.
Sharma said the airline would also "reduce its daily flights to just about 100 per day down from 117 at present" to curtail the losses.
"We will cut flights in those sectors which have not been giving us any good return like Chennai-Bangalore, Hyderbad-Chennai and Jaipur-Ahmedabad," he said.
Explaining the rationale of cutting down on the flights in short hauls, Sharma said the cuts would "increase the load factor up by 2-3 per cent besides yielding Rs 70 more per passenger".
He said that while the airline has returned one aircraft on the completion of its lease date in mid-May, it would be shortly sending back one more. It has got two additional aircraft during the same period.
