New Delhi, August 2: In its very first year of operations, SpiceJet decla#B50229 an operating profit of Rs 71.52 crore. Revenues for the year stood at Rs. 453.15 crore, higher than expectations. The airline carried over 1.60 million passengers during the year with an average load factor of 86%. SpiceJet today has a market share of 7.8% with a fleet of six aircraft.

Announcing the results for the FY 05-06 ending 31st May, SpiceJet’s Chairman Mr. Siddhanta Sharma said, “SpiceJet’s average load factor, highest in the industry, coupled with better yield management and strict cost controlling have resulted in better than the industry financial performance.” “While improving costs efficiencies, SpiceJet never compromised on safety issues and spent more on training to produce a high quality team,” he added.

In its one year of operations, SpiceJet has created very high benchmarks for the domestic aviation in India. In addition to achieving highest load factors, the airlines achieved 99.5% flight dispatch reliability and maintained over 90% on-time performance and register lowest cancellations.

Having consolidated its operation over last year, SpiceJet is expanding fast. SpiceJet is adding 5 additional aircraft by January, 2007. These brand new Boeing 737-800 aircraft will nearly double SpiceJet’s existing fleet. With this, in FY ’06-’07, revenues are expected to increase by 100 per cent to approximately Rs. 910 crore in FY’07 and costs, other than fuel, are expected to decline due to continued efforts of Team SpiceJet. The company expects to reach a double digit market share within the current fiscal year.

In October this year, SpiceJet is inducting two more new-generation Boeing 737-800 aircraft to its fleet. In October, SpiceJet will launch five new sectors (Delhi-Varanasi-Delhi, Ahmedabad–Goa–Ahmedabad via Mumbai, Ahmedabad–Chennai–Ahmedabad and Kolkata–Guwahati-Kolkata, Hyderabad-Bangalore-Hyderabad) and additional flights on its existing routes of Delhi – Goa – Delhi, Delhi – Guwahati – Delhi, Mumbai – Goa – Mumbai, Ahmedabad – Mumbai – Ahmedabad routes. By year-end SpiceJet will add two more aircraft to its then fleet of eight.

By end 2008, it expects to add 23 new aircraft to its fleet, which will operate more than 250 flights on around 24 destinations, offering more than 35000 seats per day.