A day after changing owner, SpiceJet clears all tax dues with Rs 100 cr TDS payment

Rescued budget airline SpiceJet on Tuesday cleared all tax dues a day after Kalanithi Maran transferred his 58.46 per cent stake to new owner Ajay Singh.

The airline paid the last tranche of Rs 100 crore towards tax deducted at source on Tuesday, while service tax dues were cleared a few weeks ago.

The development came on a day the airline received its first tranche of investment of Rs 400 crore from Singh.

SpiceJet also offered 100,000 seats starting at Rs 1,699 in a new flash sale for tickets booked by February 26 for travel between March 1 and April 20.

“SpiceJet is today fully current on all service tax and TDS dues, a key step in the revival plan,” Sanjiv Kapoor, the airline’s chief operating officer, said in an email to employees.

“This is the first step in our settling payables to various creditors. We have also paid all salaries to our staff and have started making meaningful payments to our other business partners,” added Kiran Koteshwar, SpiceJet’s acting chief financial officer, in a statement.

The airline, which soon hopes to submit a payment plan to the Airports Authority of India (AAI), has paid Rs 500 crore in tax liabilities since last August.

SpiceJet has about Rs 1,400 crore of liabilities, including Rs 330 crore owed to the AAI and Rs 400 crore to aircraft lessors. It hopes to clear dues as soon as its receives the Rs 1,500 crore promised by investors led by Singh in tranches by April.

“Regular payments to oil companies and airports have prevented liabilities from rising from the level seen in December,” another industry source said.

The airline, which has cut daily flights to 200 from about 350 last July, hopes to get back to 280 flights by April as it adds Boeing B737s to its 17-aircraft fleet.

However, SpiceJet may sell its unviable 15 Bombardier Q400 aircraft for a single-fleet configuration.

The SpiceJet stock closed 0.63 per cent up at Rs 24.15 on Tuesday on the BSE.