SpiceJet expects Boeing jets to be in air by July

SpiceJet, one of India’s largest private airlines, said it expects its Boeing 737 Max 8 jets to be back in the air by July, in a vote of confidence for the plane that has crashed twice in five months.

SpiceJet is one of Boeing’s biggest global customers for the 737 Max 8 jets, with 13 in its fleet and a pending order for 192 more Max aircraft by 2025 as it plans to expand its capacity in the world’s fastest-growing domestic aviation market.

“We expect that they will fly in July,” SpiceJet chairman and managing director Ajay Singh told the Financial Times in an interview at his office on New Delhi’s outskirts. “We are confident that it’s a great plane. It’s a completely safe aircraft, so we are waiting for the regulators to take that view.”

Global regulators are meeting on Thursday to consider when the Boeing 737 Max can return to the skies following the two deadly crashes in October and March that have undermined the reputation of the world’s largest commercial aircraft maker.

The US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, is in discussions to give the plane full certification by the end of June after software fixes, paving the way for regulators around the world to clear the best-selling jet to fly.

We are confident that it’s a great plane. It’s a completely safe aircraft, so we are waiting for the regulators to take that view

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said on Monday he expected the Max to be flying in North America by the end of June. He added that Europe’s aviation safety agency, EASA, “will take another month”.

Some countries, including Indonesia, where the Lion Air 737 Max crashed in October last year, have indicated they may take more time to review the plane and train pilots. But Mr Singh said he did not anticipate regulatory delays in India.

India’s aviation sector has gone through a tumultuous few months with skyrocketing air fares and a severe shortage of seats following the April collapse of Jet Airways, India’s oldest private carrier.

Despite the difficulties, Mr Singh, who controls 51 per cent of SpiceJet after it almost collapsed in 2014, expressed optimism about the future of the aviation industry in India.

A key architect of Narendra Modi’s winning election campaign in 2014, Mr Singh said he was confident that if Mr Modi secures a second term this month the government would overhaul the sector and “remove bottlenecks”, starting with reducing punitive taxes on jet fuel.

“We are close to making that a reality,” said Mr Singh. “We’ve discussed this with the central government as well as with state governments and there seems to be consensus that this needs to happen and we hope that with the new government coming in this can happen quickly.”

India’s carriers are vulnerable to spikes in the oil price and a weakening rupee. Fuel makes up 34 per cent of operating costs for the country’s airlines, far above the global average of 24 per cent, according to the International Air Transport Association.

A surge in oil prices precipitated Jet’s collapse and contributed to the demise of Kingfisher Airlines, which crumbled under a mountain of debt in 2012.

“It made me feel sad that an airline of Jet’s size and a brand as iconic as Jet should go down,” said Mr Singh, who has been dubbed the “turnround man” after rescuing SpiceJet in 2014.

Mr Singh founded SpiceJet in 2005 after serving as a Bharatiya Janata party appointee on the board of the Delhi Transport Corporation, a state-run bus service, and national broadcast network Doordarshan.

He exited the airline five years later before coming back as a white knight, injecting $100m to keep the carrier alive — and sparing Mr Modi’s administration the headache of a collapsed carrier months after coming into power.