The airline making money keeping its planes grounded We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later. Dismiss By Anurag Kotoky and Ragini Saxena July 1, 2021 — 10.34am Normal text size Advertisement Airlines follow a pretty simple formula for success -- fill as many seats and fly as many hours as possible, and keep a young fleet. One Indian budget carrier is going another way to drum up income -- not flying. SpiceJet hasn’t flown any of its Boeing 737 MAX jets for more than 27 months, after two deadly crashes operated by other airlines led to a global grounding. While most other major markets apart from China have cleared the MAX to fly again, SpiceJet seems in no hurry to get it back in the air, and not just because there’s less demand to use the jet because of the pandemic.