MUMBAI: Hundreds of passengers booked on late-night SpiceJet flights from Mumbai to Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Delhi were put through a gruelling sleepless night on Wednesday night and Thursday early hours due to inordinate delays and cancellation. Among the worst hit was a SpiceJet red-eye flight from Mumbai to Bengaluru which departed nine hours late, night flights each to Delhi, Bangalore which was delayed and then eventually cancelled, a day flight to Gorakhpur that was cancelled and a night flight to Ahmedabad which left about 3 hours late. SpiceJet flight SG 874 was scheduled to depart at 1.55 am, passengers had reached the airport around midnight.“What the hell is wrong with SpiceJet flights! Been waiting at Mumbai T1 airport since yesterday midnight (sic) and the flight keeps on being delayed!!,” said a post put on X at 8.50 am by Shivangi Pathak, a passenger. She uploaded a photograph of her boarding pass which showed the rescheduled departure time as 7.45 am. In the background a group of stranded passengers can be seen waiting at a departure gate with a passenger coach bus seen at a distance beyond the glass wall of the terminal building. In other social media posts, stranded passengers were seen arguing with the airline ground staff. Passengers venting over SpiceJet flight delays is a common theme on social media and passengers on its Bangalore flight were not the only ones who spent a sleepless night at Mumbai airport. On Thursday morning, Seemant Nuniwala posted:”Worst experience with @flyspicejet. SG 164 cancelled after hours of delay, zero support at airport, broken refund link.” She was referring to the Mumbai-Delhi Wednesday 11.15 pm flight which was delayed and then eventually cancelled. She said she had to pay Rs 15,000 to book a new flight, with no response from SpiceJet, she said. Among the other major delayed SpiceJet flights were the 4.35 pm SG 880 to Ahmedabad which was cancelled, SG 696 which was a 2.20 am departure, it left at 5.17 am.According to Cirium data, the said flight finally departed at 10.46 am, which is about nine hours behind schedule. SpiceJet issued a statement on its cancelled flights. The airline said that three of its departures from Mumbai, SG 631 (Mumbai-Delhi), SG 553 (Mumbai-Gorakhpur) and SG 669 (Mumbai-Bengaluru), were cancelled on April 29 due to operational reasons, including the grounding of an aircraft and adverse weather at the previous station (Bagdogra) of the operating aircraft, which led to FDTL (Flight Duty Time Limitation) limitations for the crew.” The airline said it is operating additional flights on Thursday to accommodate the affected passengers. “Additionally, two Mumbai-Ahmedabad flights were delayed due to adverse weather at the previous stations – Varanasi and Bagdogra – of the operating aircraft and have since departed with a delay. Airline performance data for March shared by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation recently showed SpiceJet had an on time performance (OTP) of 43 %, which was the lowest among Indian carriers. It meant that only 43 % of SpiceJet flights departed on time__which is defined as a delay of more than 15 minutes from the scheduled time of departure. The said OTP data was collected from the top ten major airports in India. Within this, SpiceJet had the worst OTP at Mumbai airport with only 29 % or about one-third of its flights departing on time. SpiceJet’s best OTP was recorded at Hyderabad airport where it has 64 % on-time flights. Then again, in March, a total of 0.92 % domestic flights were delayed by more than 2 hours and within this category, SpiceJet had the highest percentage of delayed flights at 8.67 %. In terms of passengers, it meant 32,753 passengers were affected by delays beyond 2 hours in March. The airline claimed it spent Rs 60.81 lakh in refreshments and arranging alternate SpiceJet flights. Overall, SpiceJet had the third highest cancellations after Indiaone Air and Alliance Air. Unlike the other two carriers which have a market share of 0 % (Indiaone Air) and 0.5 % (Alliance Air) for the Jan to March period, SpiceJet has a share of 3.9 %. The airline flew 16.87 lakh passengers in that three month period.
