Jet Airways suspends operations to Dhaka
Jet Airways has stopped flights to 13 international routes including Dhaka till the end of April for being on the verge of collapse.
The hard up airline which is in severe financial crisis has suspended its flights from Kolkata and Delhi to Dhaka till Apr 30, Jet Airways announced.
Other routes where services have been temporarily withdrawn include Bangalore- Singapore, Delhi-Abu Dhabi, Delhi-Dammam, Delhi-Hong Kong, Delhi-Riyadh, Mumbai-Abu Dhabi, Mumbai-Bahrain, Mumbai-Dammam, Mumbai-Hong Kong, Pune-Abu Dhabi and Pune-Singapore.
The airline has grounded seven more planes for non-payment of rental dues, bringing the number of such aircraft to 54.
Jet apologised to the customers on their Twitter page stating that they have dealing with refunds 24/7, due to flight cancellations. However, that was a little too late for some. As a result, customers immediately took to social media to express their frustration with the delay in response claiming that the airline was irresponsive.
On the contrary, there has been some positive feedback from customers too. Some claimed to receive excellent customer service from Jet Airways who helped them reschedule the flight.
The Indian airline has also scaled down the frequency of seven of their overseas routes, mostly from Delhi and Mumbai.
They have now reduced their operations to one-fourth from over 600 daily flights earlier, with just one-third of its 119 fleet being operational.
Their reduced services are on the Delhi-Bangkok route from 3 to 1 daily, Delhi-Kathmandu (4 to 2 daily), Delhi-Singapore (3 to 1 daily), Mumbai-Bangkok (3 to 1 daily), Mumbai-Doha (2 to 1 daily), Mumbai-Kuwait City (2 to 1 daily) and Mumbai-Singapore (3 to 1 daily).
According to industry estimates, Jet has a total debt of Rs8,000 crore in addition to payables such as vendor dues of Rs15,000 crore.
The airline has also lost ground in terms of market share, and its pilots and crew are said to be approaching other airlines for employment.
There is a proposed bailout on the horizon. In a rare move, the Indian government is desperately trying to save Jet, despite the fact that it is a private airline. So it is asking state-run banks to step in with a bailout plan.
With elections scheduled to start next month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to stop the airline which employs 23,000 people from collapsing.
The "rescue mission" is led by the State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest public sector bank. Rajnish Kumar, Head of the bank, said on March 21 that lenders are close to working out a rescue plan.
