Jet Airways 2.0 faces turbulence before take-off?

Waiting in the wings since April 2019 -- when it was grounded due to a financial crisis -- Jet Airways has been looking to hit the skies for long now. The new owners, British firm Kalrock Capital and UAE-based entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan, have time and again asserted that Jet Airways 2.0  will take off in the beginning of this year.

But will everything go as planned? The company has recently seen a slew of resignations. This week, Sudhir Gaur, its accountable manager and acting chief executive de-boarded the company.

Gaur was heading the operations team and was involved in key negotiations for airport slots. The airline’s finance head and head of management information systems had quit two weeks ago. 

We reached out to Jet Airways for their stance on the recent developments, but didn’t receive a response by the time of publishing of this video.

While Gaur’s replacement has been found in head of training and standards in Nepal Airlines, PP Singh, there are several other tasks to complete before Jet Airways 2.0 can take off. 

The Kalrock-Jalan consortium is yet to finalise its fleet plans. Jet Airways 2.0 is understood to have a fleet of 11 aircraft, including Boeing 777, 737 and Airbus A330, on its books now.

The two company owners had said that the airline would commence domestic operations with six narrow body aircrafts in 2022. And also that the airline plans to have a fleet of 100-plus aircraft.

Meanwhile, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed Akasa Air has already ordered 72 Boeing 737 Max aircrafts. 

The consortium had even approached the National Company Law Tribunal or NCLT, asking it to declare December 22, 2021 as the “effective date” for an immediate implementation of the revival plan.

However, the NCLT refused the plea and asked the consortium to expedite its efforts to revive the airline. 

A banker privy to the matter told Business Standard on condition of anonymity that lenders have become jittery as the Jalan-Kalrock consortium has not brought in any funds or completed any process to restart the airline.

But a person involved in the revival plan claimed that all stakeholders were working towards the revival and denied that there was any disagreement between the consortium and the lenders.

To get a better understanding of the challenges facing Jet Airways, we spoke to Mark D Martin, CEO of Martin Consulting, an aviation consulting and safety firm based in Asia.

As the expert pointed out, given the challenges it is facing right now, it seems unlikely that the refurbished Jet Airways will be able to start operations by Q2 2022. A more mature and structured timeline needs to be defined for the airline’s takeoff. Even so, with the spate of senior-level exits dogging the company, recreating Jet's uniqueness in service quality will be a major challenge. 

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