To allay lender worries, the ministry of civil aviation on Tuesday said that historic slots allocated to embattled Jet Airways would be made available to the airline as and when they revive their operations, as per the extant guidelines.

CNBC-TV18 had first reported that lenders were concerned about slots being given out to others. Jet Airways had 280 slots at the Mumbai airport and 180 in Delhi.

According to the press release by ministry of civil aviation, the government has decided to allocate some of the slots vacated by Jet Airways to other airlines on a purely temporary basis for a period of three months.

To ensure that the slots are allocated in a most and equitable and transparent manner, the government has constituted a committee comprising of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Airports Authority of India (AAI), joint venture/private airlines/slot coordinators.

"This committee would be allocation slots on a temporary basis for three months only to those airlines which bring in additional capacity (additional aircraft),” the ministry added.

A consortium of seven domestic lenders led by State Bank of India (SBI), has invited bids from potential suitors. Their debt exposure to the airline is more than Rs 8,500 crore. Earlier, banks had rejected emergency funding request of Jet Airways that forced it to ground operations.

Running into debt of more than Rs 8,500 crore, Jet Airways has shut down operations temporarily after lenders decided against extending emergency funds for its survival.

Cash-starved Jet Airways, which has around 23,000 employees, has delayed payment of salaries to the employees, including pilots.

Jet Airways owns 16 aircraft, including 10 wide-body Boeing 777-300 ERs, rest of the planes were on the lease. The full-service carrier had more than 120 planes in its fleet last year.

First Published:Apr 23, 2019 4:02 PM IST