In Depth Aviation - Grounded

India’s largest private airline Jet Airways has halted operations for now leaving its more than 20,000 employees stranded. Will Jet fly again?

- Ashish Sinha

In the wee hours of April 18, flight 9W2502, a Boeing 737800, cruising over Gujarat at a height of around 29,000 feet, gets clearance from the Air Traffic Control towers of Mumbai to decent and land at runway 09/27. There is nothing unusual about the whole procedure except that this flight, which originated in Amritsar two and a half hours earlier, would be Jet Airways’ last operational flight. An emotional crew posted on the social media pictures they had taken at the Amritsar airport. The Captain posted pictures of the Boeing 737800 being pushed back from the terminal gate at the Amritsar airport.

On April 17, the Jet management had informed all stakeholders that it would be “suspending all its domestic and international operations” till the airline gets the necessary funds to pay its employees, and there is new management that can set things right at Jet Airways. The airline owes around Rs 9,000 crore to lenders. It has not paid salaries for close to four months.

Since then, the spotlight has shifted to Jet’s potential bidders— Etihad Airways, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, TPG Capital and Indigo Partners. The market is abuzz with rumors of active interest being shown by the Tata Group in Jet Airways. Public sector lenders led by SBI is carrying out the bidding process for the new investors. Lenders have told the airline the bidding process will conclude on 10 May.

Jet, meanwhile, is confident of finding new investors. CEO Vinay Dube, in an interview, said, “We have four weeks for the bid process to get completed and we remain focused on it.”