High Utilisation and Capacity Modulation at SpiceJet

Besides the changes everyone could see, SpiceJet was doing some other things quite differently. Any airline wants to make the most of a peak season by adding flights and options. There are two ways to do it: grow the fleet or fly the aircraft harder. SpiceJet was doing both.

Wet leasing for the peak

SpiceJet was not yet ready to take more aircraft on conventional leases. Instead it wet leased aircraft from eastern European airlines that had spare capacity. In October it was bringing in six Boeing 737s on an ACMI lease, which means the lessor supplies the aircraft, flight crew, cabin crew, maintenance and insurance. A wet lease can cost more than a dry lease with in house crew and maintenance. Its big advantage is that SpiceJet can raise and lower capacity with the season. At that time SpiceJet was the only airline in India actively wet leasing to cover capacity gaps.

The airline had one Airbus A319 on wet lease. Two of the six wet leased Boeing 737-800s had arrived on 8 October 2015: OK-TVX and OK-TSF. OK-TVX had also flown for SpiceJet in the summer peak, along with two other 737-800s.

The fleet that month

The rest of the Boeing fleet was dry leased and the Q400s were owned. Of the 20 Boeing 737s, 16 were 737-800s and 4 were 737-900s. One 737-900 had been in heavy C check maintenance before the two leased aircraft arrived. After they arrived, a 737-800 went in for scheduled maintenance.

The active narrow body jet fleet was 15 dry leased 737-800s, 3 dry leased 737-900s, 2 wet leased 737-800s and 1 wet leased A319. There were also 14 Bombardier Q400 turboprops, of which 13 were active. That made 34 active aircraft, expected to rise to about 40 in November and December. The peak season was a week away.

Flying the aircraft harder

To compete at home and abroad with a small fleet, SpiceJet pushed its 737s hard. Some flew 19:30, 17:50 and 16:35 hours a day. These patterns kept the aircraft busy by day and used them on long international sectors at night and early in the morning.

Only two Indian low cost carriers flew international routes: SpiceJet and IndiGo. IndiGo also flew late night and early morning international flights, but its aircraft reached only 17:45 hours a day, on a pattern with a late night Chennai to Singapore return. Another IndiGo pattern was all international with four flights, Chennai to Dubai to Trivandrum to Dubai to Chennai, using the aircraft for 17:35 hours. Neither matched SpiceJet's heaviest patterns.

The risk

Hard flying raises revenue potential and spreads costs. It also raises the chance that one badly delayed flight causes delays across the network. Leaving good gaps between patterns makes it less likely that one day's delays carry into the next.

Q400s

Some Q400s flew up to 13:15 hours a day, and the network average was about 11:30 hours. That is good for a turboprop flying mostly domestic routes. SpiceJet's Q400s were the only turboprops in India flying scheduled international services.

A reader pointed out that SpiceJet had closed its Indore station six to eight months earlier while trimming its network. He called it poor hindsight, since Indore was a promising Tier III city. He said IndiGo was the only direct operator between Indore and Raipur and between Hyderabad and Indore, and that fares on Hyderabad to Indore had gone up since SpiceJet stopped flying it.