[RahulNagaraj]

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Tuesday paved ways for Jet Airways to come back by approving the Kalrock-Jalan consortium’s resolution plan. The Mumbai bench of the NCLT has asked the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA) to allot slots to the airline within 90 days, CNBC TV18 reported. A government official told CNBC TV18 that the DGCA and civil aviation ministry would study the detailed order before deciding on slots.

In February, the DGCA sought more time from the tribunal to clear their stance on Jet’s slots. The aviation ministry temporarily gave most of the slots of the Jet Airways to other domestic airlines after it ceased all operations in April 2019.

“In some airports it may not be possible to operate the exact same slots. If everything goes well, we can hope by end of this year Jet Airways can fly again," Ashish Chhawchharia, the court-appointed professional running the carrier’s insolvency told Bloomberg.The revival plan also included a dedicated freighter service and hubs in smaller cities beyond Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Jet Airways, once India’s biggest private carrier, has been undergoing a resolution process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) for two years. In June 2019, NCLT admitted the insolvency petition against Jet Airways filed by the lenders’ consortium led by the State Bank of India.

In October 2020, the Committee of Creditors (CoC) of the grounded airline had approved the resolution plan submitted by a consortium of London-based Kalrock Capital and UAE-based entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan.

Source: News18

[RM Motorsports]

Jet Airways has tweeted that process for hiring cabin crew have started.

[IamNikhil]

Originally Posted by RM Motorsports

Jet Airways has tweeted that process for hiring cabin crew have started.

Quite surprising that they have started hiring again, despite many petitions from erstwhile workforce still awaiting resolution. Almost all of them are yet to receive their accumulated pay and other monies. Hiring new recruits in such a scenario will only create more resentment for the company.

[DragonHawk]

Originally Posted by IamNikhil

Quite surprising that they have started hiring again, despite many petitions from erstwhile workforce still awaiting resolution. Almost all of them are yet to receive their accumulated pay and other monies. Hiring new recruits in such a scenario will only create more resentment for the company.

In addition to pending salary and other employee benefits, they are yet to refund the amount for the canceled flights. I wonder how are they planning to address it before they start their domestic flights.

[no_fear]

Too little too late. There is no point in resurrecting Jet. The Indian aviation market is a tough act, with high ATF fuel, landing / parking fees. Unless those barriers are removed, any new aviation player will find it difficult to survive.

[whitewing]

Originally Posted by DragonHawk

..they are yet to refund the amount for the canceled flights..

And I am in that queue, although I do not know where the queue is :-) . Mine was for a ticket booking that I cancelled prior to Jet stopping flights. I was told that I would get the money in 2-3 days, which never materialized. Written off any hopes of getting back that money now.

[IamNikhil]

Originally Posted by DragonHawk

In addition to pending salary and other employee benefits, they are yet to refund the amount for the canceled flights. I wonder how are they planning to address it before they start their domestic flights.

Absolutely. I am still awaiting an amount of around 28k for some tickets to Bangalore that were cancelled from their end. The promise was of getting the refund in 3-5 working days which has now turned into years! Have practically lost all hopes of ever getting my money back.

[AZT]

Ex employees awaiting compensation will probably move court or something. I'm not sure if they flying again will be so smooth.

[Sheel]

Jet Airways may fly again.

[IamNikhil]

Jet Airways aims at restarting domestic operations by Q1-2022, and short haul international operations by Q3/Q4 2022. The plan is to have 50+ aircraft in 3 years and 100+ in 5 years.

[SnS_12]

Originally Posted by AZT

Ex employees awaiting compensation will probably move court or something. I'm not sure if they flying again will be so smooth.

Jet Airways owes each of its employees anywhere between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 85 lakh as per the claims admitted under the insolvency resolution process. The revival plan, submitted by its new owners Jalan-Kalrock have proposed a payment of about Rs 23,000 to each employee.

The admitted claims of employees stands at Rs 1,265 crore, while the consortium has proposed Rs 52 crore to settle their claims. Financial creditors to Jet Airways will have to take around 95 per cent haircut as Jalan-Kalrock have proposed to pay Rs 385 crore against the total claim of Rs 7,807.74 crore.

People who were associated with Jet have paid a heavy price for their loyalty.

[Hayek]

Originally Posted by AZT

Ex employees awaiting compensation will probably move court or something. I'm not sure if they flying again will be so smooth.

Don’t see how ex employees or anyone can get anything once the Insolvency proceedings are complete. All claims need to go to the NCLT or NCLAT. Of course, given appeals that are being filed, the resolution may take some time - but whatever the Kalrock consortium is giving is the best bet for creditors.

[RM Motorsports]

Jet Airways is looking to onboard experienced Trainers, Captions and Co-Pilots (Type Rated 737 NG) for immediate joining.

Source - Twitter

[fhdowntheline]

I am just thinking aloud here -right now the operations are very metro-centric. For instance, why should any upcoming carrier be headquartered in DEL/BLR/BOM etc? Why not say an AMD or NAG or even LKO or CJB ? There should be good incentives to do this at every level of the government. This will ensure faster development of regional airports as a transportation system rather than airplane travel still being tagged as a more elite option.

[TKMCE]

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

I am just thinking aloud here -right now the operations are very metro-centric. For instance, why should any upcoming carrier be headquartered in DEL/BLR/BOM etc? Why not say an AMD or NAG or even LKO or CJB ? There should be good incentives to do this at every level of the government. This will ensure faster development of regional airports as a transportation system rather than airplane travel still being tagged as a more elite option.

Lot of issues. Senior management including pilots/engineers do not prefer smaller cities nor do expats for reasons like schooling for kids, commuting options to home town , family disruption etc. Also unless the particular city is a hub for the airline (example - Air India Express whose headquarters is Kochi), you will anyway be basing a lot of crew in the big cities as most of your flights will be operated from there. You do not want to base your crew in Nagpur or Coimbatore and spend a fortune in layover accommodation allowances at Mumbai or Delhi. In addition most of the maintenance facilities are in the big cities and every so often you have to ferry aircraft there.

Air Deccan had put a Trivandrum base way back in 2006 and had a "back to base" concept for crew scheduling. Some of the flights from that base were running half empty because Deccan did not want to waste money on lay overs and losses climbed up in no time because of the resultant scheduling problems.

Your concept has worked relatively well for Air India Express where most of the flying is from the four Kerala airports of Trivandrum, Kochi, Kozhikode and Kannur to the Middle East. Also the company has a maintenance base at Trivandrum. So the head quarters at Kochi made sense in paper at least. Also it helped that say a Kochi Dubai flight on an aircraft due for maintenance immediately after could be operated as a Dubai Trivandrum flight because of the nature of operations, thus avoiding expensive ferry flights.

But in reality, the senior management in Air India Express never wanted to shift to these smaller towns with the result that some key department heads like Flight Safety and a few others were working from places like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai etc. far away from the action. There were hardly any captains based in Kozhikode, most of them were ferried in from the the big cities and this indirectly contributed to the Kozhikode crash Read that report if you can. You will get a good idea why this small city head quarter concept will not work in India.