Lessors reject Paramount's fresh offer

GE Aviation Service Ltd and Celestial Aviation Trading, the two British companies which leased out three aircraft to Paramount Airways, today rejected the airline’s offer to pay $1 million in 10 days to clear the arrears, claimed to be $10 million. They alleged that the airline had repeatedly reneged from its promise to pay the dues.

“We don’t want to do business with such persons,” their counsel Harish Salve, said before a Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan.

Senior counsel Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for Paramount, today read out the offer that it would pay $1 million in 10 days, if it was allowed to fly the planes and the balance of $4 million in five months.

The judges were also not sympathetic to the Indian airline. The Bench asked Paramount to pay Rs 25 crore immediately so that they could pass a favourable order. But Singhvi said the airline was not in a position to pay such an amount, when the planes were grounded for many weeks and lying in Chennai. He said the Coimbatore-based airline had a share of 27 per cent in the South and the present crisis would affect 1,400 employees.

On a complaint by the lessors, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) earlier grounded the planes and threatened to deregister the airline itself. An airline needs at least five planes to get registration. If three out of the five planes of Paramount are taken away, it would lose its registration.

The airline also fought lawsuits in London, Madras and Delhi High Courts without any success. It approached the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court ruling that validated the DGCA’s December 2009 order to deregister and ground Paramount’s planes.