NEW DELHI: Civil Aviation Secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola on Thursday said the 440 slots vacated by Jet Airways at Delhi and Mumbai airports would be allocated to other airlines for a three month period and 30 new planes were being inducted by them to ensure minimum disruption in the aviation airspace despite Jet shutting shop.
SpiceJet on Thursday announced it will induct six more Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease. These six aircraft are in addition to the 16 B737s and 5 Bombardier Q400s that the airline will soon induct. The total number of planes to be inducted in the immediate future now stands at 27. SpiceJet has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation for a No objection certificate (NOC) to import the planes.
Subject to regulatory approvals the aircraft would begin joining SpiceJet’s fleet in the next ten days.
Separately, state-owned Air India is looking at leasing five of the Jet Airways Boeing 777s and operate them to London, Dubai and Singapore. “We are exploring the possibility of operating five of the grounded B777s on the established routes, hitherto operated by Jet Airways,” Air India chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani wrote to SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar on April 17-the day the private carrier went belly up, PTI reported.
Earlier in the week IndiGo, country’s largest carrier, which has very aggressive expansion plans had announced the addition of domestic flights from Mumbai and Delhi.Kharola said after a meeting with airline representatives that there were 280 vacant slots at Mumbai and over 160 at Delhi airport, which would be allotted to other airlines for a period of three months. “Slots will be allocated for a period of three months. Airlines getting extra capacity will get preference in slot allocation,” the secretary said.
The slots would be allocated by a committee, comprising officials from the DGCA, Airports Authority of India (AAI) and respective airports in a “rational, fair and equitable” manner.He also pointed out that airlines were in the process of adding more planes to the fleet to fill in the gaps created by Jet. “About 75 planes have been grounded in the domestic sector in the last few months. DGCA is monitoring the situation. We have been able to induct around 55 planes as of now,” he told mediapersons.