I am a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

- Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1846

Luck can often land up being a zero-sum game. Sometimes it’s on your side but when it turns, it can run out almost as swiftly. In the case of SpiceJet’s chairman and managing director Ajay Singh, luck currently appears to have run out and how.

In 2014-15, soon after Singh took charge of a beleaguered airline from the Marans — it was clearly not their cup of tea — luck played some part in where he found himself. The airline was on the brink of closure, dues had mounted and the Marans were not in a position to pull the airline back from the precipice it found itself. Singh took charge of the carrier for the now famous ₹2 and the Marans also invested ₹578 crore to keep the carrier afloat.

Luck was on Singh’s side as soon as he took charge, aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices, an important factor in determining airline economics, which had been quite high when Marans were in charge, came down. Along with a series of other quick decisions and renegotiations, Singh successfully turned the airline around. The airline expanded its fleet, the number and frequency of routes, its loads were robust and it went through a spell of many profit-making quarters. Things were so good that in 2017 Singh gave Boeing an order for 200 Max aircraft, 155 firm and the rest on options.

The 2019 Max crash and its subsequent grounding marked the end of this spell of good fortune. As Boeing stopped deliveries, SpiceJet’s plans to replace its less efficient aircraft with brand new, more fuel efficient planes came to a grinding stop. In March 2020, it no longer mattered whether one had any aircraft at all since all scheduled operations globally halted following the pandemic that was to hold all airlines in its uncertain grip till very recently.

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SpiceJet: When Luck Is A Double-Edged Sword