SpiceJet eying ‘marketing arrangement’ for charters from North America

NEW DELHI: An Airbus A330-900 of Portuguese charter firm Hifly operated an Amsterdam-Bengaluru -Hyderabad repatriation flight on Sunday, bringing home 269 Indians. The special flight was organised by Indian community organisations in Netherlands. SpiceJet says it made arrangements and got the permission for this flight.
SpiceJet is trying to work out similar “marketing arrangements” for charter flights from North America also. In this model, the aircraft has the flight number as per code of the charter firm; people buy tickets for the charter flight and SpiceJet says it gets the required permissions for such flights in India.
This is not the usual wet lease model where an airline hires aircraft with operating crew. Then such planes operate flights with the airline’s code. The model SpiceJet is trying to work out is of “marketing arrangements”, where a charter flight brings in people to India and then goes to whoever and wherever it is chartered by next.