Indian court approves Jet Airways resolution plan

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), on June 22, 2021, approved the resolution plan for the revival of Jet Airways (JAI, Mumbai Int’l) under the new ownership of the Kalrock Capital-Murari Lal Jalan consortium. The NCLT had until now only relayed its decision to the airline verbally. Jet Airways said in a stock market filing that it would disclose the details of the verdict as soon as it receives the written order. CNBC-TV18 reported that the tribunal gave the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) 90 days from June 22 to award the slots needed for the airline’s revival. The authorities earlier maintained that the revived carrier would not automatically regain slots it had held prior to its April 2019 collapse as they had already been reallocated to other operators. Even before the NCLT’s final ruling, the airline’s new owners had tentatively secured around 170 slot pairs at around 30 secondary airports in India excluding Mumbai Int’l and Delhi Int’l, Business Standard reported.

The representatives had reportedly discussed the matter directly with the airports and received assurances that the slots would be available once Jet restarts. “Due to the pandemic, the airports expect that airlines will operate reduced capacity for at least two years, which will make slots freely available. More slots will be available at Delhi after the new fourth runway is operational by early next year,” an unnamed source said. Although slots at secondary airports are important to Jet’s still undisclosed business model, new investors have repeatedly underlined that access to Mumbai and Delhi was paramount to their plans. Shortly before the conclusion of the NCLT hearings on June 18, 2021, the new investors said they would be open to accepting alternative slots at the two most congested gateways within 15 minutes from the original time.

Jet is reportedly no longer arguing that it needs to regain the exact slots it had but only the right to slots, which seemingly opened a window of opportunity to negotiate with the regulator and convinced the NCLT that the resolution plan should be approved. Jet Airways hopes to restart within six months of the NCLT’s final order, using 25 narrowbody and five widebody aircraft. The carrier will opt for an entirely new fleet of leased rather than seek to retrieve the aircraft it had leased up to 2019 or use the ones it still owns. According to the ch-aviation fleets ownership module, Jet Airways continues to own one A330-200, two B737-800s, one B737-900, and five B777-300(ER)s. In a separate, albeit largely procedural development, the carrier’s shareholders overwhelmingly rejected its financial reports for the last two fiscal years.