Jet Airways curtails flights to save cash
Jet Airways is curtailing its daily operations to reduce cash burn. The airline is reducing domestic routes in the winter schedule beginning October end, and has already begun cancelling flights.
At least 20-30 departures are being cancelled daily from metros and key airports including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Aviation analysts attribute the cancellations to grounding of planes and poor seat loads.
Two consecutive quarters of steep losses and mounting costs have pushed the airline to a corner. Salaries are being delayed and vendor payments getting stretched as the airline looks to renegotiate its contracts and raise fresh capital.
The airline has been discounting forward sales to raise funds and is yet to pay September salaries to its pilots and engineers. Thirteen of its planes, including ATRs, Boeing 737s, Airbus A330s and Boeing 777, are on ground. The airline has a fleet of 124 planes and operates around 650 flights daily.
Analysts say the airline has gone into a spiral — it is not earning enough to cover up costs, which has forced it to keep some of its planes on ground. “While five Boeing 737 Max planes have been inducted, the overall capacity deployed by the airline has not increased because of the groundings,” said Ameya Joshi, founder of aviation blog Network Thoughts.
Jet Airways said the planes are under maintenance. “As a part of the airline’s routine operations the fleet, including Boeing 737, Boeing 777, A330 and ATR aircraft, is undergoing scheduled maintenance including C-checks,” the airline said.
“In line with practices followed globally, the airline regularly reviews its network to address its capacity exposure to markets and airports,” the airline said, adding that network changes depend on external factors such as crude price and rupee depreciation, among others.
On Thursday, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation approved the domestic winter schedule. In all, 23, 117 departures per week have been approved, a 22 per cent rise over the previous year. Jet Airways’ departures, however, will see 1.2 per cent reduction.
Jet Airways has inducted five Boeing 737 Max planes in the past four months and the airline said it will be inducting six more by March 2019. The airline plans to start a new flight between Pune and Singapore, and increase frequency on the Delhi-Singapore route, it said.