The Cat with Ten Lives

Just as the aviation industry had lost all hope, SpiceJet’s never-say-die chief pilot pulls another rabbit out of the hat.

For the last couple of months, low fare airline SpiceJet and its chairman Ajay Singh who has been valiantly piloting this rocky boat since the pandemic, has been in the news for a strange combination of reasons.

A SpiceJet aircraft flies past a rainbow in Chennai. (AFP)

One, in September a Q400 lost a wheel soon after take-off (it simply fell off) but the aircraft landed safely after a full emergency was declared at Mumbai airport. The same month, the airline offered a ₹32 crore interest free advance (for reasons that remain a mystery) to its chairman, with a subsequent statement claiming it was not “prejudicial to the airline’s interests” even as software giant TCS took it to court for failing to pay dues.

In October, the airline’s fleet touched a new low of 24 operational aircraft (a mix of Boeings and Q400s). In July 2025, the airline’s market share was 3.2 percent (lower than Akasa’s 4.8%) while its loads and on time performance remained lacklustre as per DGCA data. Following this, the airline announced that it would be un-grounding a few aircraft and adding 18 additional Boeings on wet and damp lease, ahead of the festive rush to take its operational fleet up to 45 by end of November.

Clearly, matters for the airline appeared to be reaching some kind of head and many were certain it was in choppier waters than ever before. For years now, aviation industry analysts have written the airline’s obituary and employees have been looking for alternate jobs both within the industry and outside it – but at no stage did things look as grim as they did in August-September 2025.

But in the characteristic never say die style of the airline’s chief pilot, in the last few weeks, SpiceJet has undertaken a series of bold moves to pull itself back from the brink, adding a total of 10 new aircraft (its total operational fleet is 35 now) including a few on damp lease, one wide body one, and some ungrounded B737 MAXs.

To effect its turnaround, the carrier has also brought in Sanjay Kumar, former chief commercial officer of IndiGo, as executive director, a sign that the airline is doing its best to script its revival. It has also settled vendor dues and reduced the number of court battles it has been fighting. Moreover, a long pending court battle with the airline’s previous owner Kalanithi Maran with severe financial implications went in its favour. Singh has reiterated time and again in the media that the company has cleared salary dues and is strengthening its balance sheet by restructuring liabilities. He has also stated that the 2026 plan is fully funded and no further fundraising is immediately required.

“Since October 2025, we have been in the most intensive phase of our revival and growth plan. The focus has been very clear: bring back grounded aircraft as quickly as possible, induct fresh capacity, put a more predictable, stable schedule in place and expand the network in a commercially sensible manner. We are firmly on track. In the last six weeks alone, we have added 16 aircraft,” Singh said.

See-sawing since 2019

After Ajay Singh took over the reins of low fare airline SpiceJet from its previous owner Kalanithi Maran in 2015, the airline has seen good times and bad times. With oil prices falling sharply almost as soon as he took charge, common sense, his understanding of the business, ability to think ahead and out of the box helped him steer the airline back from the brink. By 2019, the airline had brought in its 100th aircraft and its share price had reached a peak.

Its luck turned that year after two Max crashes (Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines) and the aircraft’s subsequent grounding; then the pandemic hit. The airline’s single man army has since been fighting a lonely battle and has used every trick in the book to keep his airline afloat despite headwinds from literally every direction including numerous court battles.

Post-pandemic a whole set of factors combined to bring the airline to where it is today. While the closure of Jet Airways and Go First helped all players, the sale of Air India changed the dynamic of the industry irrevocably and left the smaller ones in a lurch. In fact, with the post-sale consolidation, only two smaller scheduled carriers remained: SpiceJet and Akasa, which launched after the pandemic and carried none of the baggage of the crisis.

With the airline’s fortunes see-sawing wildly despite plenty of efforts by its CMD, by August 2024, 9000-odd employees of India’s oldest low fare carrier had lost all hope and were beginning to prepare to go down the way Go First and Jet Airways had.

But last September, Singh managed to raise ₹3,000 crore from institutional and other investors through a qualified institutional placement, an amount that almost equalled the company’s total market capitalisation at the time.

Then, on September 13, 2024, Boeing Engineers started a strike, halting the 737 MAX production and triggered a global shortage of engines and parts in the secondary market – effectively delaying SpiceJet’s recovery.

For the last two years, the management has been promising to bring more grounded aircraft back in the air but without success. Conditions only started normalising by February/March 2025 and the airline secured slots for engine maintenance in various shops across the globe and 19 engines were finally dispatched, with 8 more under process.

But till September, nothing much changed. Then came the surprising revival over the past month.

The airline hopes that by April 2026, 10 aircraft will be ungrounded, including 4-5 in the early part of the current winter schedule. A total of 23 aircraft were to be inducted from October 2025 onwards in damp lease to ensure that they have the requisite fleet to maintain their slots, the aim being to double its operational fleet and increase its operational ‘askm’ (available seat kilometre) three times by December 2025. In fact, SpiceJet’s decision to wet and damp lease additional capacity to capitalise on the winter season is being viewed as a “bold, all out Ajay Singh style” move. As a former senior management member, who says he’d bet his money on the airline’s survival, puts it: “If he goes down, he will do it in style”.

Even as this article went to press, the company claimed to have embarked on an expansion spree to recoup lost ground. Some industry observers are of the view that the funds infusion undertaken by the company is “too little, too late” and with the industry dynamics fundamentally altered post sale of Air India, the future for the carrier looked challenging.

Steadying the ship

Although Singh leads from the front, analysts say that he has failed to build a convincing second tier and that the business remains hopelessly dependent on his leadership, not the ideal situation for a strong foundation. This, they add, deters long term investors, who might be looking at aviation as a future growth sector. Kumar’s hiring should address this.

Secondly, the airline - like many Indian run companies – has always functioned without a strong board for the last several years. Chaired by Singh, the board members include his wife Shiwani Singh as non-executive and non-independent director, Anurag Bhargava, Ajay Chhotelal Aggarwal and Manoj Kumar as independent non-executive directors. Sonum Gayatri Malhotra is an independent director with the airline. Last week, Chandan Sand, head of legal, was elevated to the board too.

Investors and possible funders raise a third red flag with the company: the sheer volume and number of legal cases the airline has been battling is a deterrent for those who might have the funds, consider aviation a reasonably sure shot business to invest in (seeing IndiGo’s success) but are wary of the sheer volume of litigation the company seems to have attracted. Other than lessors and vendors, the airline had been entangled in a long legal battle between former owner Maran and Singh for the last many years. While some of these legal cases, including the one with Maran, now stand resolved, it has taken a toll on the airline’s credibility and standing.

“SpiceJet has been a fairly resilient company whose rank and file, pilots and crew have stood by it through many troubled times and several management changes”, argues a former senior management official. But its luck of late, he argues, appears to be running out.

Singh clearly disagrees, arguing that the carrier is carefully scripting its revival and looking at better days ahead. “I believe that the worst is firmly behind us, and the second half of the year will reflect the results of the groundwork we have put. Our aim is not just to stabilise the airline, but to build an operation that is consistently reliable and financially robust. We still have work to do, but by the end of this financial year, we expect to be a very different airline – larger and financially healthier.”

Anjuli Bhargava writes about governance, infrastructure, and the social sector. The views expressed are personal.