India’s TruJet to restart ops with single ATR72

TruJet (2T, Hyderabad Int’l) has announced it is resuming operations from February 23, listing eight routes, but it did not say anything about the USD25 million in funding it had claimed last week it was in talks with a potential investor to secure.

“As you are aware, TruJet operations were temporarily hampered due to various administrative and technical reasons from February 5. TruJet is pleased to inform that it is resuming operations from February 23,” Vankayalapati Umesh, the carrier’s managing director, said in a statement issued to local media on February 21.

In social media posts, it listed the routes it pledged to resume: Hyderabad Int’l-Vidyanagar, Vidyanagar-Bangalore Int’l, Bangalore-Bidar, Hyderabad-Rajahmundry, Hyderabad-Nanded, Nanded-Mumbai Int’l, Mumbai-Kolhapur, and Mumbai-Jalgaon.

Sources told the newspaper BusinessLine that TruJet would for now deploy one aircraft but that the company had recently succeeded in raising funds and planned to launch services on other routes once other aircraft in the fleet are operational.

A source told the newspaper The Hindu: “Next week onwards we will have another aircraft, and the week after that we may have one other aircraft.”

BusinessLine alleged last week that because of TruJet’s cash-flow crisis, lessors had reclaimed seven of its fleet of Avions de Transport Régional turboprops. The airline denied the allegations.

According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, TruJet has one active aircraft, ATR72-500 VT-TMP (msn 875) leased from Elix Aviation Capital. The rest of its fleet is stored or in maintenance at Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, and Mysore, namely four other -500s (two also courtesy of Elix and two leased from Aergo Capital) and a single ATR72-600 (leased from DAE Capital).