Jet Airways to prune fleet marginally, expansion still on

Our Corporate Bureau

New Delhi, Dec 3: Jet Airways is planning to reduce its fleet size by two to three aircraft to 36 aircraft on estimates of a 5 per cent drop in domestic traffic in 2002-2003.

It has also deferred its plans to raise fresh equity by way of a private placement or an IPO, Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal told The Financial Express on the sidelines of the India Economic Summit, 2001 here on Monday.

Jet Airways may record a drop of about 15 per cent in its bottomline for the year 2001-2002 as its passenger load had suffered sharply after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, Mr Goyal said.

“Our fleet expansion, under which we had ordered 20 Boeing B737s in 1996, is on schedule. Of this, 14 have been delivered, while the balance will be spread over the next two to three years,” Mr Goyal said.

“We are not renewing the lease agreement for two to three aircraft in the next fiscal as we feel that the traffic will drop further,” he added.
“Besides, out of the eight ATRs ordered, seven have already been delivered and the last one will be included on December 7,” he said.

At present, Jet has 37 aircraft, which include 30 Boeing 737-400, 737-600, 737-700 and 737-800 aircraft and seven ATRs. Of these, 16 aircraft are owned by the airline while the rest have been taken on lease. The private sector airline will be taking a decision on reducing its fleet by April 2002.

“After the September 11 events, traffic went down by 30 per cent. There was a drop of 70 per cent in traffic coming on overseas airlines for domestic interconnectivity,” Mr Goyal said.