Mumbai: With the lenders rejecting the lifeline of Rs 400 crore on Wednesday Jet Airways, which has been on a wing and prayer since January, is left with no other option but to ground operations at least temporarily.
Since the March 25 resolution to infuse Rs 1,500 crore into the airline is yet to fructify, the once leading airline has been defaulting on payments, forcing its lessors to retake almost all its planes and was operating just about six planes as of Tuesday. Jet Airways board had Tuesday authorised chief executive Vinay Dube to make one last appeal to the SBI-led consortium to get a life-line of Rs 400 crore Wednesday, before taking a final call on the future.
Jet is the seventh airline to go down since May 2014 and the 13th one after East West was shuttered. During the past five years airlines like Air Pegasus, Air Costa, Air Carnival, Air Deccan, Air Odisha and Zoom Air have all gone belly up even as the government boasts of double-digits growth for more than four years in tow.
“The airline has failed to garner the funds it was desperately looking for to continue operations,” a source in the airline said.
Finally the decision of grounding came in late evening yesterday. Teetering for over four months due to cash-drought, Jet Airways, flying for over 25 years, will fly its last flight on Wednesday night.
“With immediate effect, we are compelled to cancel all our international and domestic flights. The last flight will operate today,” Jet Airways informed the exchanges. The last flight will leave the Amritsar airport at 2230 hrs for New Delhi as per its flight schedule.
Mallya laments ‘airline karma’
Embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya took to social media once again, this time to express his solidarity with Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal and repeat his own offer to repay all the money he owes to public sector banks.
“Even though Jet was a major competitor to Kingfisher at the time I feel sorry to see such a large private airline on the brink of failure when government used 35K crores (Rs 35,000 crores) of public funds to bail out Air India. Just being a PSU is no excuse for discrimination,” Mallya wrote in his latest intervention on Twitter.
