Tougher times ahead but it will get better: Jet CEO to staff

NEW DELHI: The Jet Airways management on Thursday told its employees that the airline is hopeful of being “very close” to finding a solution to its serious financial woes. The airline has been defaulting on salary payment to pilots, engineers; loan repayment to banks and payments to stakeholders like aircraft lessors and maintenance companies. It is in talks with Etihad, some Indian biggies like Tatas for infusion of funds and the consortium of lender banks with over Rs 8,000 crore exposure to the airline.“Our chairman (Naresh Goyal), the board of directors and your management team are working hard on a balance sheet transaction that will help us eliminate our current challenges. In fact, the airline’s key stakeholders are actively engaged towards finalization of the resolution plan. We are very close, and I ask for your continued patience. Given our ongoing challenges, this is a very tall ask,” Jet’s CEO Vinay Dube said in a mail to employees on Thursday.“We are working as fast as we can for a successful outcome recognizing the tremendous sacrifices all of you are making. I believe that we will be successful. Our guests are certainly rooting for us - sometimes it feels like the entire country is rooting for us … I believe we will come out of our current set of challenges. It might get tougher before it gets better, and our ascendancy will be gradual, but collectively, with your unstinted support and commitment, we will come out of this a stronger airline. I believe that as I believe in you,” Dube said in the mail.He complimented the high morale employees are showing in this difficult hour. “I can say with great pride that all of you continue to run a very good airline even under the most adverse of circumstances. Based on OAG, an airline industry leader in data and analytics, Jet Airways ranked number 1 in arrival OTP (on time performance) amongst Indian carriers for both November 2018 and December 2018. OAG also put Jet Airways at the top of the operational reliability table for the month of December 2018 based on the fewest cancellations by any Indian carrier. While flight cancellations, regardless of reasons, have an immense impact on our guests, frontline colleagues as well as our operational and commercial teams across the network, I want to highlight to you that it has been your hard work and dedication that has put us on top of Indian aviation’s reliability chart and despite some of our challenges this week, I’m confident that we will once again be at the top of the class in terms of key operational parameters for the month of January,” it added.Meanwhile as stated in a BSE filing on Wednesday, three aircraft of Jet resumed flying after getting repaired. Jet “has grounded one aircraft for scheduled termination of its engine's lease and one aircraft for technical reasons. (It) is also in process of redelivering three aircraft to lessors due to the scheduled expiry of their respective lease terms. Further, three aircraft have been temporarily grounded by the company to carry out an engine normalization exercise. Once the engines are normalized all three aircraft will be ready to fly. We expect this process to be complete by Friday, February 1, 2019,” Jet’s VP-global compliance and company secretary Kuldeep Sharma had said in the regulatory filing to BSE on Wednesday. "Jet Airways reinstates three aircraft into its fleet post the engine normalisation exercise,” said an airline spokesperson on Thursday.

from Economic Times http://bit.ly/2Rr7CKx