The airline will reconfigure its planes to add business class seats in its low-cost service
Faced with heavy losses, budget carrier JetLite has shelved plans to fly abroad. It will also stop 20 of its 131 daily flights within the country and ground three of its 18-strong fleet of Boeing 737s.
Jet had been operating two similar, low cost services under two different brand names, Jet Airways Konnect & Jet Lite for quite some time now.
The move will help Jet Airways strengthen its subsidiary JetLite's performance.
Confirming this, Jet Airways' CEO, Wolfgang Prock-Schaeur, said, "In the process of integrating the airlines, which is a must to keep JetLite afloat, there will be a shift of certain employees from JetLite to Jet and the workforce for both the airlines will be combined."
A day after withdrawal of low fares by some major airlines, Jet Airways and its low-cost subsidiary JetLite have introduced Rs 300 and Re 1 as basic fares respectively under 30-day advance purchase scheme.
JetLite was created in 2007, following the takeover of Air Sahara in April 2007.
JetLite is the new brand name of Lucknow-based airline Air Sahara after Jet Airways acquired it for Rs 1,450 crore in April this year.
Value-carrier JetLite, formerly full-service airline Air Sahara, which was bought by Naresh Goyal last year, will offer a voluntary separation scheme to 750 employees who have been with the airline for one year or below, Chief Operating Office Rajiv Gupta confirmed on Friday.
Speaking to Business Standard, Jet Executive Director Saroj Datta said: "SpiceJet and JetLite are an absolute fit in so far as their business models are concerned."
Three months after joining the budget carrier JetLite, Finnish CEO Maunu von Lueders plans to quit the organization at a time when its parent Jet Airways intends to merge the back-end operations to cut costs.
Sources say the arilines has inducted a senior pilot from IndiGo to head its safety team.
The delivery of nine Boeing 737-800s were scheduled between 2010 and 2012. These would now come in between 2012 and 2015.
Jet is believed to be in talks with leading private equity players.
India's latest airline will now fly in a swirl of blue. Four months after being taken over by Jet, the erstwhile Air Sahara in its new avatar as JetLite is already showing signs of perking up while readying its new livery.
The government's contention was that Sahara Airlines Ltd (now JetLite) was promoting the real estate and housing business and area operations of Sahara India Commercial Corporation.
More than five years ago on an April evening, cash-starved Jet Airways announced temporary grounding of operations after flying as a full service airline for 25 years. Since then, more than 20,000 jobs and money worth thousands of crores owed to lenders, vendors and passengers evaporated while awaiting an insolvency resolution. And today, the Supreme Court ordered the airline's liquidation, marking the formal completion of a turbulent journey into the sunset and shattering lean revival hopes.
The Enforcement Directorate late on Friday arrested Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal in a money laundering case linked to an alleged bank fraud of Rs 538 crore at the Canara Bank, official sources said.
In a dramatic turn of events in May 2019, an Emirates aircraft en-route to Dubai was asked to stop while it was taxiing for a take off in Mumbai. The pilot was given no reason and ordered to immediately return to the parking bay. As the aircraft returned to the terminal, two passengers from the first class - Naresh Goyal and his wife Anita - were offloaded by the immigration authorities, who said the duo cannot leave the country. Goyal, founder of Jet Airways, was stunned. The man, who ruled the aviation sector for two and a half decades with an iron hand, did not expect to be offloaded in this fashion.
The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday said it has attached in London, Dubai and India assets worth Rs 538 crore of Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal, his family members and companies as part of a money laundering investigation linked to an alleged bank loan fraud. The attached properties include 17 residential flats, bungalows and commercial premises. Located in London, Dubai and various cities in India, these properties are in the name of various companies like Jetair Private Limited and Jet Enterprises Private Limited, Goyal, his wife Anita, and son Nivaan, the central agency said in a statement.
Dubious and personal expenses of Rs 1,000 crore were made from bank-loan funds for Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal and his family members even as the airline "diverted" money to some tax havens, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) alleged on Saturday, after arresting the businessman in a money-laundering case. Goyal (74) was taken into custody late on Friday night after the central probe agency took him to its Mumbai office from Delhi. A special court set up to deal with cases lodged under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on Saturday sent him to the ED's custody for 10 days, till September 11.
The airline has two operating permits and offers both full service and no-frills service in the domestic market.
JetLite, which was acquired by Jet Airways for Rs 1,450 crore, is operating three of its seven Canadian-built Bombardier airplanes. JetLite has a total 24 aircraft, including Boeing B737s.
Both Jet Airways and Go First have met with a similar fate of landing up in insolvency, albeit for different reasons. Whether Go First will be able to avoid the sharp erosion in value like in the case of Jet, experts say, will depend on how quickly it is able to restart operations and retain its slots at airports. Go First, owned by the Wadia group, filed for voluntary corporate insolvency resolution on May 2 due to inadequate capacity utilisation that led to a cash crunch.
Last year, air traffic grew by 9.7%.
IndiGo continues to fly high as the top airline in India while crisis-hit SpiceJet has some good news.
Some of its subsidiary airline JetLite's pilots have quit.
A JetLite aircraft with 139 people on board suffered damage to its tail while taking off from Mumbai on Wednesday but managed to land safely at the National Subhash Chandra Bose Airport in Kolkata.No one was injured in the incident described by the airline as a 'tail scrape'. In a statement, JetLite claimed that "at no time was the safety of the passengers and crew compromised" in the incident. The tail of the Kolkata-bound Boeing 737 was damaged while taking off from Mumbai.
Konnect to be phased out as airline struggles to contain losses.
According to media reports, Jet Airways had announced a staggering 50-per cent cut in its basic fares across all domestic routes following a dip in the passenger load factor and fuel prices. The cut in basic fares would be applicable to all domestic routes undertaken by Jet and its low-cost arm, JetLite, the reports added.
DGCA report shows IndiGo's continued dominance in market share with 30.7%, followed by SpiceJet at 20.9%.
Jet Airways made a stand-alone profit of Rs 87.5 crore (Rs 875 million).
All Indian carriers flew 60.22 lakh (6.02 million) passengers in May compared to 57.10 lakh (5.71 million) in April, while the January-May figure stood at 267.22 lakh (Rs 2.67 million) as against 260 lakh (2.6 million) in the same period last year recording a 2.78 per cent growth, latest official air traffic data showed.
Budget carrier IndiGo continued to be the largest player with a market share of 46.9 per cent ferrying 54 lakh passengers in March.
Jet Airways on Thursday said it would introduce more flights on both its domestic and international networks.
During the January-July period, passenger growth jumped 21.13 per cent to 455.78 lakh.
High airport charges and steep operating cost hurt profitability of Indian airlines in 2013.
Vistara was operating from Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Goa.
With rising costs, Indian carriers would operate 19 per cent less number of flights this winter compared to last year, though no-frill airlines would put in more flights during the busy season starting this month-end.
ir India provided facilities such as refreshments, refunds.
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