Mumbai, Nov. 11: Jet Airways today reported a turbo-powered surge in losses at Rs 713.60 crore in the second quarter ended September 30 even as Chennai-based SpiceJet said its losses had swelled to Rs 240.06 crore in the same period.

Jet Airways’ losses leapt 479 per cent from the Rs 123.16 crore loss it had reported at the end of the first quarter ended June 30.

The airline, which is the nation’s biggest in terms of market share, had reported a profit of Rs 12.4 crore in the second quarter of last year.

Jet’s woes were magnified because of a foreign exchange loss of Rs 275.68 crore which, the company said, arose because of a “restatement of the unhedged portion of the foreign currency monetary assets and liabilities”. These losses were blamed on the steep depreciation of the rupee and were being treated in the accounts as “exceptional in nature”.

SpiceJet was equally in trouble: its losses in the second quarter ballooned 233 per cent from a loss of Rs 71.96 crore at the end of the first quarter. Like Jet Airways, it had reported a Rs 10.11 crore profit at the end of the second quarter last year.

Jet Airways said its revenues in the quarter had risen 7.4 per cent to Rs 3,293.54 crore from Rs 3,067.62 crore in the year-ago quarter.

Revenues of the discount carrier SpiceJet rose 21 per cent to Rs 7,664.93 crore from Rs 6,291.11 crore in the same quarter a year ago.

SpiceJet, which has started operating overseas flights recently, said its aircraft fuel expenses had jumped 83 per cent to Rs 478.14 crore from Rs 260.79 crore in the year-ago quarter.

The stocks of both airlines climbed today after E.K. Bharat Bhushan, director-general of civil aviation, said troubled airline Kingfisher wasn’t operating 36 per cent of the flights it had scheduled for the winter season and these slots could be farmed out to the other players.

The Jet stock leapt 2.16 per cent to close at Rs 265.35 on the BSE after touching the day’s high of Rs 278.70.

SpiceJet rose 3.62 per cent to Rs 24.30 — both stocks thriving on Kingfisher’s woes with investors choosing to ignore the weak second quarter numbers that both airlines put out.

National carrier Air India , too, is mired in financial difficulties. The pilots are at loggerheads with the management over the training of Boeing Dreamliner. Salary dues are also a bone of contention between the staff and management.