Civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu calls emergency meeting on Jet Airways crisis

Suresh Prabhu, has asked the civil aviation secretary to call for a meeting to discuss grounding of flights, advance bookings, cancellations, refunds, and safety issues, if any, at Jet.

Aviation minister Suresh Prabhu on Tuesday directed his ministry’s secretary to hold an emergency meeting on the debt-ridden Jet Airways massively cancelling flights after grounding of a large part of its fleet. The meeting will be held later this evening.

Jet has delayed payments to banks, suppliers, pilots and lessors - some of whom have forced the airline to ground as many as 41 planes. (Mint)

The minister’s direction came in the wake of the airliner drastically reducing its operations due to liquidity crunch.

“Directed Secretary, @MOCA GOI to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, advance bookings, cancellations, refunds and safety issues, if any,” Prabhu said in a tweet.

“Asked him (civil aviation secretary) to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA,” he added.

Earlier Monday, Jet Airways engineers’ body wrote to aviation regulator DGCA, seeking its intervention in the recovery of their salary dues, saying non-payment was affecting their psychological condition which, in turn, was a “risk” to the airline’s flight operations.