Has SpiceJet’s Ajay Singh lost his turnaround touch?
The low-cost carrier is in all kinds of trouble with lessors and debtors. It will take all of its promoter’s substantial good offices with the government and more to keep it afloat.
Why read this story?
Editor's note: The senior airline executives, assembled at the Ministry of Civil Aviation for a meeting with bureaucrats, were aghast. Here was SpiceJet being thanked despite showing a blatant disregard for orders issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the regulator. It was mid-March 2019. The aviation world was still reeling from the shock of twin air tragedies involving Boeing 737 Max aircraft. In fact, the second one, involving an Ethiopian Airlines flight which crashed killing 157 people, had happened just a few days before, on 10 March. Like aviation regulators around the world, the DGCA too grounded the aircraft in India. But SpiceJet, which was one of two airlines—the other being Jet Airways—to operate the aircraft in India, continued to fly the planes. In doing so, it put the safety of its passengers and crew at risk. “The official explanation was that these flights were operated to get the aircraft back to their maintenance facilities. But there were pictures of these flights departing with passengers making the rounds of social media,” recounts a government official who had followed the developments …
More in Business
You may also like
How the IndiGo crisis went unnoticed in November
Despite enough warnings, no alarm bells were rung. The buck now stops with Rahul Bhatia, the promoter and managing director of India’s largest airline that is facing its biggest crisis ever.
Annus horribilis: 2025 was the year India learned it wasn't indispensable
It is the logical consequence of foreign policy built on a decade of illusion rather than the realities of power. The question is whether anyone in the government has the courage to admit it.
The 72 hours that saw IndiGo unravel
A crew crunch, new regulatory norms and simmering discontent push India’s biggest airline into its biggest crisis yet, one that could seriously dent its reputation for reliability.