Former SpiceJet pilots join bankruptcy chorus over ₹3 crore unpaid dues

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NEW DELHI : Two former pilots of SpiceJet Ltd have approached the Delhi bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), seeking to declare the airline bankrupt over unpaid dues totalling ₹3 crore.

The petition, alleging that the no-frills airline failed to pay salary arrears, deferred payments, final settlements, allowances, and overtime dues, adds to SpiceJet's ongoing litigations in the NCLT, the Delhi high court, and the Supreme Court over other unpaid dues. Read this | SpiceJet insolvency claims: Are creditors leveraging IBC forum for settlements? Filed by former captains Sameer Breja and Karan Gupta, who joined SpiceJet as first officers in 2011 and were promoted to captains in 2016, the plea claims that the airline owes them ₹1.21 crore and ₹1.31 crore, respectively.

The dispute traces back to 2020, when SpiceJet implemented temporary salary cuts due to the coronavirus pandemic, promising deferred payments once operations returned to “normalcy." However, the airline later tied these payments to an operational benchmark of 26,000 flight hours per month—a condition the pilots claim was arbitrarily introduced and never disclosed during hiring. “The operational creditors (pilots) were surprised to see such an email since the corporate debtor had never come up with any such figure to justify normalcy.

In fact, during the pre-COVID period or even at the time of appointment, SpiceJet had never disclosed such figures to define normalcy of flight operations," the plea says. "Thus, introducing this figure of 26,000 hours per month was not only arbitrary but also an after-thought by the Corporate Debtor to evade its liabilities." Mint has reviewed a copy of the plea.