Spicejet is planning to take advantage of the e-commerce boom, as the carrier looks for new avenues of revenue.
Theairline plans to buy 100 mini trucks and open as many as 40 warehouses across the country to provide fast delivery options to the click-happy Indian consumer who increasingly buys everything from groceries to expensive gadgets from ecommerce platforms.
SpiceJet shall utilise mini trucks, all Tata 407s, to provide connectivity between warehouses and airports. The infrastructure will provide the much-needed backbone to its air cargo plans.
It is not just the belly of the aircraft that the airline is trying to fill with cargo. It is also experimenting to carry cargo, especially related to ecommerce companies, inside the cabin, strapped to seats. "A pilot (study) was conducted on the Bengaluru-Mumbai late-night flight last month," said an executive aware of the development.
There are various issues around carrying the cargo by fixing it to the seat through ropes, first one being the damage it causes to the seat, the executive said.
With moves like these, the airline is also targeting an increase in its ancillary revenue that has increased to about 17percent to that of 6 percent a year ago. Analysts said the plan may work if the focus is on distribution and not on creating infrastructure for the operations.