Last week, SpiceJet's opened a discount of 50 per cent on 10 lakh seats across specific routes. The airlines saw a rush of passengers to book before the offer expired. The sales of tickets were for travel between February 1 and April 30, a period when airlines struggle to get loads on domestic flights. The airline has managed to earn profits of over Rs 160 crore within a period of just three days. This amounts upto 40 per cent of the airline’s monthly revenue of Rs 400 crore through ticket sales.

SpiceJet managed to sell over seven lakh seats out of the total 10 lakh that were on offer. "The upcoming quarter has inherent weakness. We are usually able to sell about 70-75 per cent of our seats in the quarter which means about 25-30 per cent of our seats are unsold during this period. The entire focus was to sell these unoccupied seats. The thought behind the move was to stimulate the market and we have now reserved those unsold seats. The idea was to benefit both the passengers and the airline," said SpiceJet CEO, Neil Mills.

Mills said what SpiceJet implemented was a simple strategy that airlines follow across the globe to garner incremental revenues by offering discounted fares for a very short and limited period through ticket sales. SpiceJet expects about Rs 20-25 crore in incremental revenues for the period of three months. "The idea was to get a direct connect with the passenger and we achieved that," he said.

The total number of seats available during the period is about 50 lakh, out of which it has managed to sell 10 lakh seats. Denying reports that the airline's server crashed during the past three days due to the heavy traffic, Mills said: "We regulated the flow and we booked about 10,000-15,000 seats every hour during the weekend," he said.

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