Indian budget airline SpiceJet told a court on Thursday that it’s having a hard time staying in business as it was ordered to make a payment to its former owner over money owed.
In 2018, SpiceJet lost an arbitration case due to share transfers from the company’s former management to Kalanithi Maran in 2015. SpiceJet was asked to pay $70 million plus interest. Maran later took SpiceJet to court, saying he was still owed $48 million. SpiceJet said it was having financial difficulties at a hearing before the Delhi High Court on Thursday regarding Maran’s lawsuit seeking the unpaid debts. “We are struggling to stay afloat,” the airline’s lawyer, Amit Sibal, told the judge. SpiceJet offered to deposit 750 million rupees ($9.08 million) within ten days, but the judge instead demanded that the airline pay 1 billion rupees ($12 million) by September 10 and warned that if it fails, it could consider seizing the company’s assets in order to collect the debt.
SpiceJet said in a statement it would honour the court order and “make the specified payment within the prescribed timeframe.”
Just a few days ago, Supreme Court asked the head of SpiceJet, Ajay Singh, to come to court and defend allegations by Credit Suisse claiming certain unpaid dues. Both the Delhi High Court case and the Supreme Court case will next be heard on Sept. 11.
This month, SpiceJet announced that it had made its biggest profit in four years. This was possible because it dropped the operation of numerous flights.
However, SpiceJet is currently working hard to get money and get around a quarter of its airplanes back in action. These planes were grounded amid battles with their lessors over payments as competition heated up severely in the sector.
