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One airline in India has hit upon a new way to make a bit of extra money while encouraging people back on planes sell them Covid-19 tests.
SpiceJet Ltd., India’s second-largest carrier, is offering coronavirus screening to passengers for as little as Rs 299 ($4). That’s about one-third the current market rate. SpiceHealth, the unit selling the tests, has also set up mobile-testing facilities for the general public in Mumbai and New Delhi, where starting from Rs 499, people can come in or have a sample collected from their home. Although aviation in India, with its big domestic market, is recovering faster than in places like Singapore and Hong Kong, which have no local business to speak of, the impact of the pandemic is still being felt. No-frills carrier SpiceJet posted a net loss of Rs 57 crore in the quarter ended Dec. 31 compared with a profit of Rs 73.2 crore a year earlier.
(March 9): A group of Air India Ltd employees has been ruled out of a bidding process to take control of the loss-making national carrier, as the government moves ahead with its years-long attempt to offload the airline.
“I write to you with a heavy heart on the outcome of our bid to acquire Air India,” the airline’s commercial director Meenakshi Malik wrote in a letter to employees dated March 8. “We have been unsuccessful in qualifying to the next phase of the ‘Disinvestment Acquisition process.’”
Citing a letter from Ernst & Young, which is advising the government on the sale, Malik said the group didn’t meet eligibility requirements. They include submitting three years of audited financial statements for foreign consortium members and being an appropriately regulated foreign investment fund. The group of employees partnered with a Seychelles-based fund for the bid.