Low-cost carrier SpiceJet on Wednesday said it had sold 37,348 tickets on the opening day of bookings. The company claimed no other carrier in Asia had managed to sell so many tickets on day one.
SpiceJet opened bookings yesterday with tickets as low-priced as Rs 99 to Rs 799. Besides, its regular fares range from Rs 699 to Rs 6,999. SpiceJet's website received in excess of 5.4 million hits in the last 30 hours, the company claimed.
"I am astounded by the level of bookings yesterday. We had our first sale at 6:40 am. Tickets were sold not only in the discounted category but also in the regular fares category. The response that we have received shows that there is a huge untapped market for air travel in India," said Mark Winders, chief executive, SpiceJet Ltd.
The carrier, which will start operations on May 23, had offered 9,000 tickets at Rs 99 and about 30,000 tickets at the discounted introductory offer.
Compared with this, Air Deccan, the country's first low-cost carrier, has so far sold a total of 82,263 Rs 500 tickets, according to its website.
A normal SpiceJet ticket costs a little over the AC III tier train fare. These one-way fares will be available in 5-6 different price buckets, with the most expensive being approximately 55 to 60 per cent of the regular full-economy fare.
The normal fare between Delhi and Mumbai, and vice-versa, starts from as low as Rs 1,699 and goes up to Rs 4,899.
As part of its expansion drive, SpiceJet plans to include 20 aircraft in its fleet in the long-run. Besides, the airline is also expected to break even in the first year of operation itself.
SpiceJet has also entered into an agreement for fleet maintenance with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
