Five months after the temporary suspension of operations of Jet Airways, around 50 percent of its slots at state-run airports are still lying vacant, as per the officials aware of the development.

The airline grounded operations for a temporary but indefinite period on April 17 and vacated 346 slots at airports run by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and over 400 at private-run airports, as per the documents reviewed by CNBC-TV18.

Out of the 346 slots vacated by the airline at AAI airports, 174 or 50 percent of the capacity is still to be allocated to other carriers and is lying unutilised.

Chennai, which is the fourth busiest airport in the country as per FY19 figures, has 30 vacant slots. This means that 65 percent of Jet Airways’ capacity at the airport, which stood at 46 slots, is sitting idle.

The issue is serious for non-metro airports like Guwahati and Indore which have a limited number of flight operations and hence, vacant slots to the tune of 10 for former and 16 for the latter are hurting the connectivity to these states as well.

Around eight slots of the airline are also lying unutilised each at Amritsar and Lucknow, as per the information reviewed.

“Slots lying vacant certainly means that the capacity induction post the suspension of Jet Airways has not been able to compensate fully for the vacuum that was created in April. IndiGo is the only carrier which is inducting an aircraft almost every week. SpiceJet has also crossed 100 in terms of fleet count, it has inducted some ex-Jet Airways planes but then there are still question marks about the exact timeline of MAX service resumption. Others are not expanding that rapidly. Also, the focus is shifting more on international. So, it will take some time to make these slots functional again,” an industry expert said on condition of anonymity.

Jet Airways had vacated as many as 766 slots in April, with nearly 55 percent or 420 of these slots at the airports of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Nagpur, CNBC-TV18 had exclusively reported in May.

A slot allocation committee under the civil aviation ministry has been working on distributing vacant slots of Jet Airways to other carriers since March 20 on an ad-hoc basis for an interim period. As of now, slots allocated to other carriers are valid till March 2020.

Remember, slots are being allocated by a committee comprising officials from regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), AAI and private airport operators. The committee meets twice a month to allocate new slots on an ad-hoc basis.

Airlines are required to submit plan on aircraft induction, crew availability at least three working days ahead of these bi-monthly meetings but priority, however, is given to those airlines which are adding capacity or aircraft, serving virgin and underserved routes, withdrawing aircraft from adequately served routes, and proposed date of commencement of operations will also be considered before allotting slots.

As per advisory by DGCA, airlines must keep in mind that this transfer is for an interim period, for now, and slots can be withdrawn with a 30-day prior notice.

First Published:Sept 18, 2019 8:04 PM IST