deltheking

Hi,

I am planning to take my first SpiceJet flight in India in the 3rd week of August. Have never flown SpiceJet before.

So, how does SpiceJet do reliability & on time arrival performance wise? The only other option I have is Air India and I would never take it ! Any other airline should be better than Air India !!

Thanks.

hserus

Are you so sure? AI is pretty good these days, and they serve you food versus your having to buy a sandwich or whatever on spicejet.

Book whichever airline suits your cost and your budget. All domestic flights are going to be quite short - under three hours.

CCU_Flyer

Spicejet has a on time performance clause on their website. As mentioned earlier since flights within India are relatively short you can take flight which suits your timing more including AI who have been doing pretty well lately.

arakhanna

Deltheking, i was in a similar situation, yday.

Took an AI flight yday, AI 773 CCU BOM, 19 40 flight.

After listening to the better reviews of AI on FT took the plunge. The only other flight at that time was spicejet at 19 55. Saved 15 minutes on the face of it. Indigo was an hour later at 840 or so I thought....

Given past FF status with AI my details were with them. My colleagues got no messages.

My first message was to quote verbatim:
"Air India regrets rescheduling of your flt AI773 of 14AUG14. The revised time of departure is 2010 hrs. For dts pls call 18001801407"

My first reaction was okay... good to know. FYI my flight was on 13AUG.

After 15 mins i get a revised message with 13AUG14. Now i am perturbed. Generally flights are never 30 mins late with AI.

Called the number and found out the incoming flight was from Chennai AI766. Flight track said it took off 80 mins late.

Sure enough after a bit get messages of flight being pushed from 19:40 to 20:10 to 20:35 and finally 21:00.

To add insult to injury, post boarding, they chose not to switch on air conditioning. Cost cutting i presume. After waiting on the tarmac for another 30 mins which seemed like eternity, we did takeoff.

So deltheking i feel you when you say AI never again.

BTW the spicejet flight took off on time, and yes the 8:40 Indigo landed before the 7:40 AI by a long shot. My bad.

Yes, the food options are better on AI than SJET but in order of importance flying on time is first priority for me.

manishsibarian22

Choose any airline but not spice jet. I have worst exp with spice jet. They are good for nothing. Even after complain it does not matter to them at all.

Even to their regular clients they do not serve well, what more we can expect.

leonidas

Spicejet on-time guarantee clause is a joke. In India, the main reason for delay is weather/ ATC. And the delay keeps rolling over. So one time I was taking a 10pm flight which was delayed by 1:45hrs. Spicejet blamed it on ATC congestion from 2 flights earlier (at some airport at mid-day) and denied any compensation.

Most pathetic airline I have ever flown.

quarryking

Spicejet may be on time, but they cancel and re-schedule flights quite a bit..so plan carefully, more so if there are international connections involved on other carriers.

CCU_Flyer

Never knew ATC connection is part of the clause. Has anyone ever gotten any compensation from spicejet?

Keyser

why????i take over 100 ai flights a year & i would never take spicejet....

ashishp

The problem with Spice is that they are most likely to cancel flights among all the private carriers. Problem is most acute out of Bangalore from what I have observed - on one notable occasion, they cancelled 7 flights and merged 4 others! Total chaos!

G8 have been known to cancel/merge as well - merge flights in case of low loads on any one of many flights to a destination and outright cancel if it is an outbound station like RPR or BHO. Can throw your schedule out of gear!

Thats why I stick to AI or 9W in that order!

manish83

SpiceJet auditors have raised doubts about its survival. So I wouldn't book a flight with them which is too far in future. They may be heading the Kingfisher route.

deltheking

Thanks to all for the replies. I will flying out of Hyderabad. And the only 2 options I have are SpiceJet and AI.

Regarding AI - my experiences with them were very bad. Was flying from Newyork to Hyderabad via Mumbai and on 3 occasions in 3 years consecutively - they left us on the runway in Mumbai for more than 6 hours. the 1st two times it was 10 hours each; 3rd time was 5 hours each. Had no other option but to fly AI as I was flying during Christmas/New year last minute travel - and only AI was available on the 3 occasions.

I felt they have no concept of time. A 3hr delay is not a delay for them - it is normal scheduling.

On time performance plus no cancellations are my biggest concerns. Rude staff, no food etc are non issues for me.

Now with all your posts - you are putting me in no man's land !
Dont know which one to take - Spice or AI - and I have to make my decision pretty fast !
And also, I dont know if this an important factor - but SpiceJet has 3 flights per day for my route whereas AI has only 1 per day. So, that way I have more back up options with Spice. Thanks !

AllAboutFlying

AI's reliability has improved in the last few years. I seldom travel with spicejet so I can not comment. But I have usually never faced any such problem. but 10 hrs delays are unacceptable in any circumstance.

I would buy AI and if in case there is a huge delay or something you always have 3 spicejet flights to look for

Remember.. 3 flights might give them an option to delay one and prepone one to merge if passengers are less, and as far as I have heard, spicejet does not mind doing this.

deltheking

An update on my query. I booked SpiceJet for my travel. Must say - their online reservation/booking website is pretty good and was pretty easy and straightforward processing a US credit card.

I would give any other private airline a shot before venturing into the bloated govt/tax payer funded Air India territory .

GuyFromBOM

If the fare was same (or +/- 10%), I would pick AI over SG. But, there is not much of a difference between the two in terms of reliability.

You can also check the OTP of both flights on the FlightStats website and then decide.