New Delhi: The grounded Jet Airways has issued a gag order to its employees advising them to refrain from speaking with external stakeholders.
An internal mail accessed suggests that talking with external stakeholders especially the media might impact the bidding process for airline’s stake sale.
“We are currently at a critical stage of our bid process that is being led by our lenders. We urge you to refrain from engaging with the media and let the task of interaction with external stakeholders (especially the media) be restricted to our colleagues at corporate communication team,” the mail sent late on Thursday said.
Faced with delay in payments of salaries and prospect of joblessness, hundreds of airline employees had gathered on Thursday at the Jantar Mantar to voice their concerns and appeal to the government to intervene for revival of the company.
The staff from across various departments, including engineering, maintenance, guest relations and security had participated in the demonstrations.
The Jet Airways had late on Wednesday suspended its operations indefinitely.
The airline’s revival now depends on successful stake sale initiated by the lenders led by the State Bank of India (SBI).
In an official statement, the airline lenders led by the SBI has said that they were ‘reasonably hopeful’ that the stake sale process would succeed and determine fair value of the enterprise.
According to industry sources, private equity firms TPG Capital, Indigo Partners and the NIIF and Etihad Airways were in the race to buy a stake in the grounded carrier.
SpiceJet ‘poaches’ staff
New Delhi: Low-cost carrier SpiceJet has hired as many as 500 pilots, cabin crew, technical and other ground staff in recent weeks with most of them coming from now-grounded Jet Airways. “As we expand and grow, we are giving first preference to those who have recently lost their jobs due to the unfortunate closure of Jet Airways. We have already provided jobs to more than 100 pilots, more than 200 cabin crew and more than 200 technical and airport staff,” said Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, SpiceJet. He added that SpiceJet will induct a large number of planes soon. The airline on Thursday said it would induct as many as 27 planes in a record time of less than two weeks. The low-cost carrier is the second biggest carrier by domestic market share of 13.7 per cent (as on February, 2019). It has a fleet of 48 Boeing 737s, 27 Bombardier Q-400s and one B737 freighter. The Gurgaon-based carrier has fast captured the traffic by aggressively expanding its fleet. Following the fall of rival Jet Airways, it has bagged most of the grounded carrier’s unused slots. “SpiceJet has got 24 slots compared to 20 of IndiGo,” an airline industry source said.
AI opens talks for Jet’s planes
Mumbai: Air India chairman Ashwani Lohani held preliminary talks with his State Bank counterpart Rajnish Kumar in the Capital Friday on the national carrier’s interest in leasing five Boeing 777s from the now-grounded Jet Airways, sources close to the development said. The meeting lasted for over more than an hour at the Airlines House, the headquarters of the flag carrier in the national Capital. “During the meeting with Kumar, Lohani discussed his proposal on leasing five B777s of Jet Airways,” the sources said. As per these sources, the AI chairman will now take the proposal to the airline’s board for approval, after more internal discussions and if all goes well, then the proposal will be sent to the aviation ministry for the final approval. The AI board is scheduled to meet on April 27 and the subject may come up for discussions.
—agencies
