Jet Airways staff consortium, AdiGroup to bid jointly for 75%

New Delhi: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, a Jet Airways Employee Consortium and AdiGroup Friday announced a partnership to bid for 75 per cent of the airline through the NCLT process, members of the consortium said. The debt-laden company became the first domestic airliner to go into bankruptcy after the Mumbai Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) admitted an insolvency petition filed by the SBI on behalf of 26 lenders on June 20.

The airline owes Rs 8,500 crore to banks and around Rs 25,000 crore in arrears to vendors, lessors and employees. "Jet Airways Employee Consortium and AdiGroup are delighted to announce their partnership to bid for acquisition of 75 per cent of Jet Airways through NCLT process.

"This is a new dawn in the history of India Aviation of operating an airline through Employee Initiative programme where every single employee of Jet Airways will become an owner of the airline.

"It truly embodies prime minister's dream 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas Sabka Vishwas', a joint statement from the consortium and the AdiGroup said. At a press conference here Capt. Ashwani Tyagi, Commander Boeing 777, General Secretary-Society for Welfare of Indian Pilots, and one of Jet's senior-most pilots who has been with the airline for 18 years said the airlines was like a family to him and it was "challenging yet exciting journey to revive Jet Airways."

On Wednesday Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had told the Rajya Sabha that as domestic airlines have started inducting more aircraft in their fleet, airfares on domestic routes are "observed to be fairly normalised at present".

In a written reply to a query whether the Centre is aware about the "unjustified tariff hike" imposed by airlines to various sectors in the country, the minister said, "Due to suspension of operation of Jet Airways and grounding of Boeing B737 Max, there was a reduction in capacity in few domestic sectors."

"With a view to maintain transparency, as advised by Ministry, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) started monitoring of airfares on certain routes selected on random basis to ensure that the airlines do not charge airfares outside the range declared by them."

The minister said that during monitoring, civil aviation regulator DGCA observed that though there was a marginal hike in airfares, it remained within the "fare brackets established".